Business Ethics

The late 2000’s has brought about the world’s worst financial cash since the Great depression in the 1939’s. This has caused the crash of multiple institutions, bailout of banks by governments and major downturns in the stock market globally. This had a significant impact on the failure of large businesses, declines in consumer wealth assessed to be of trillions of U.S. dollars and the slump in economic activity around the world bringing about the global economic recession in 2008. The slow growth of the US housing market which had let to more people not meeting repayments meant homeowners had fewer ways of refinancing loans because property prices were not rising. BBC business editor Robert Peston said that this was a “warning to other banks to watch out” in the beginning of 2007. The bursting of the housing bubble, which come about in 2007, caused the values of securities tied to U.S. real estate pricing to drop massively damaging financial organizations globally. This caused immense uncertainty throughout the world damaging investor and consumer confidence which in turn brought about large losses during 2008 and early 2009 causing declined in international trade.   The effects were felt greatly globally however ended between late 2008 and mid-2009.
In my essay I aim to discuss whether business schools bear a certain responsibility for the current financial situation. I aim to start by discussion by explaining how the housing market crashed and the morally and ethical implications of the decision made by managers during this period. I aim to bring in Kantian ethics and virtue ethics in business to help further understand. Later on I aim to explain why business schools may not be solely responsible for the crisis as the world is ever evolving. I will then conclude by giving my own opinion as to whether in fact business schools bare a higher responsibility.
The root cause of the real estate crash in 2008 was the subprime lending market. Subprime lenders saw... [continues]

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