A look at animal welfare and business ethics for business school students

It may seem odd to draw a connection between animal welfare and junk-bond king and fraud meister Michael Milken, but stay with me for a few.  You see, I’ve been for years wondering if business ethics courses, like the one I was required to take when I got my MBA, are now addressing the topic of treating animals humanely—and thus encouraging tomorrow’s decision-makers to imbue their work with compassion toward our fellow species.

We all know, of course, that lots of companies—even right here in the good ole USA—have a long way to go.   After all, together they routinely inflict inhumane living conditions and deaths on billions of animals—and they spend fortunes resisting legislative attempts to improve the way their industries treat the animals off whom they profit. 

Are America’s business leaders—not to mention, many of those around the world—beyond all hope when they continually choose enhancing the bottom line over showing any kind of mercy?  Could a little educational intervention prevent them from making inhumane decisions later on?  Who knows, but it seems worth the attempts.

And that’s what brings me to Michael Milken, a one-time Wall Street bigshot at the now-defunct Drexel Burnham Lambert firm who was charged in 1989 with securities fraud and racketeering, but later pleaded guilty to felonies for violating securities and reporting laws.  He garnered a ten-year prison sentence and was fined millions of dollars.  The SEC banned him from the business for life.

Milken’s illegal acts became public just prior to my 1990 enrollment in the MBA program of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in Philadelphia, the same place where Milken got his MBA.  My memory of the educational experience—which could be incorrectly recalled—is that the school, somehow feeling a simultaneous bit of shame and duty, would now require its b-school students to take a small, semester-long course on ethics as a way to help shape upright future graduates.  Or at least that’s what I remember being rumored at the time. 

I don’t recall much about the course—other than looking at different ways to make ethical decisions, such as whether it was acceptable to knowingly allow harm to some if the decision benefits the greater good overall—but I am glad we were asked to take it.

I also don’t remember if the course ever engaged in any discussion of animal welfare.  I, myself, wasn’t woke to the issue of cruelty at that stage of my life—my eye-opening would take the adoption of two shelter dogs a few years later.  But, as I have learned more in years hence about the suffering of animals through some companies’ routine business practices, I’ve often wondered whether exposure to the topic of animal suffering in b-school ethics courses might make a difference in terms of how our nation’s highly paid corporate executives treat the animals over whom they have complete life-and-death power. 

If places like Wharton could feel enough responsibility about trying to reroute people’s greed-heavy mental circuitry that can cause national scandals a la Michael Milken by plopping an ethics course into their curricula, then what are they doing to assist animals within our country’s borders who suffer some of the most inhumane treatment possible?  Not that the burden should all be on universities, but have these schools taken any sort of active stand?

My curiosity led me to speak with Brian Berkey, an assistant professor of legal studies and business ethics at the Wharton School.  His resume reads like a grab-bag of elite universities: bachelor’s and master’s degrees, including Phi Beta Kappa membership, from NYU and a PhD in philosophy from Berkeley, as well as fellowships at Harvard and Stanford. 

His current research focuses on “sweatshops and exploitation, corporate obligations of justice, the ethics of boycotts, and effective altruism,” according to his online Wharton biography.  Well, this is just the kind of person I hoped to reach out to for this article.

His bio also says that he works in moral and political philosophy, including business and environmental ethics.  Special areas of concentration include “questions about the demandingness of morality, individual obligations of justice, ethical issues arising with regard to climate change, and the relationships between ideal and non-ideal theory.”

I must confess that I am not even sure what all that means.  Professor Berkey e-mailed me one of his papers entitled “Prospects for an Animal-Friendly Business Ethics,” swelling my confusion.

“Despite the increased attention that has been paid in recent years to the significance of animal interests within moral and political philosophy, there has been virtually no discussion of the significance of animal interests within business ethics,” he wrote.  “This is especially troubling, since a great deal of the treatment of animals that will seem especially problematic to many people occurs in the context of business, broadly construed.”

In his work, he evaluates how the interests of animals would fare when examined through the prisms of four prominent theories of business ethics: the Shareholder Theory, which says that managers should focus primarily on their fiduciary duty of maximizing returns for owners; the Stakeholder Theory that says managers should act according to the prioritized preferences of affected parties; the Social Contract Theory, which renders animals unable to participate in such an unspoken, unofficial agreement because they are not “moral agents” whose interests are entitled to reciprocity; and the Market Failures Approach that decries efforts that would “undermine, rather than support, the efficient operation of the market.”

Sadly, Brian concludes, “Four of the most prominent approaches in business ethics cannot plausibly be understood as animal-friendly.”

Once I read through Brian’s paper, I knew for sure I was more than a few intellectual planes below my interviewee.  What you see above is the tip of the iceberg; there is nothing among the scholarly jargon that says flat-out: “Cruelty to animals is wrong and we, therefore, simply shouldn’t do it for that reason alone.”  Despite the complexity of business ethics analysis, Brian kindly permitted me to ask him some questions about my peculiar curiosity: Are business schools today focusing on kindness to animals when and if they teach business ethics?

I asked him if he thought ethics might receive more attention in business administration curricula now than back in the Dark Ages, when I was slogging through the hell of statistics and decision science word problems to get my degree, more than 25 years ago.  He replied that most undergraduate and master’s programs likely do require some ethics instruction but that often ethics is not a substantial or rigorous portion of the required-courses menu. 

Moreover, trained ethicists were often not teaching the classes.  “This situation frustrates people like myself,” Brian said, “because ethics, like other areas of study, is a specialized academic field that requires expertise to teach well.”

I got the impression that these business ethics courses nationwide were, for the most part, low-priority add-ons that students could navigate without too much effort.  That’s how it felt for me back in the day.  I can’t remember if our ethics class resulted in a grade or if we even had a test, or whether it was only ungraded reading and discussion, hence making it easier to glide through rather blithely.  Ethics…pfff…whatever.

Brian sees Wharton as an exception to this flaw since the business school has six philosophers, including himself, on faculty.  “No other business school comes close,” he said.

Brian said it seemed to him that many of the ethics courses in the business programs at U.S. universities are often centered around compliance with regulations and laws. 

“They often come across as how to avoid prosecution, rather than encouraging students to explore important questions like moral obligations that go beyond what’s written in the law,” he explained.

Although he discusses animal welfare in some of his classes, he finds it challenging to have more robust discussions because there is no scholarly literature that connects animal issues with business ethics.  And he prefers discussions supported by intellectual works based in an ethical philosophy framework, rather than advocacy materials from animal organizations that document first-hand the horrific treatment of animals. 

Fortunately, that lack of such material may be coming to an end.  Brian noted that this year he has written an essay for a collection of academic writings on the intersection of business ethics and the humane treatment of animals. 

The collection is called Animals and Business Ethics and it should be available sometime in 2020.  Brian noticed the opportunity on a listserv for philosophy academicians and decided to send in an article. 

Brian has been interested in animal issues for many years and has researched the philosophical debate on the topic going back to Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation, published in 1975.   This tome is considered by many people to be the launch of animal rights as a branch of ethics. 

Meanwhile, factory farming occasionally becomes the subject of classroom discussion as young people explore the topic of business ethics.  Students, he pointed out, are frequently aware that many agriculture companies “make significant profits from suffering.”  They are typically interested in the topic and sympathetic to the plight of animals.  He is not certain, though, if anyone changes their dietary practices after learning more. 

“Factory farming is the usual focus for discussion because the scale is so large,” said Brian.  “No one can deny what’s going on is really awful.”

The idea of a humane ethical supply chain dovetails with his work on climate change.  After all, he explained, raising cattle for beef products has a much more negative impact on the environment than production of plant-based foods.  Of course, there also is occasional discussion on the suffering of lab animals and cruelty inflicted by other industries. 

Wharton arranges periodic faculty-student lunches and Brian often finds these occasions helpful to discussions about morality and its relationship to corporate decision-making that affects animals.  Because he is a vegan, even his ordering of meals sparks informal conversations that can be impactful for students.  At such times, he finds himself bringing up personal talking points like the range of vegan food options now available to the buying public, making it even easier to enjoy tasty foods while eating cruelty-free.

Discussions with students explore concepts like the moral duty of running a business.  These are the sorts of ethical quandaries he would like to see explored in future academic literature.  Is a business there simply to enrich shareholders, even if it means additional suffering?  Is the manager’s duty to make conditions better for animals used by the business even if it means negatively impacting the bottom line?  What if profit is reduced to the point of job loss or dissolution of the company?  What can and should students—as well as future managers—do?

Additional philosophical issues about animal suffering that would be worthy of discussion are complex, theoretical topics.  For example, if humans could help stop the suffering of wildlife by preventing predators from attacking prey, should they?  Or should nature take its course?  Animals who are killed by others, such as gazelles attacked by lions, certainly suffer.  Is there a moral obligation among people to help stop such suffering, even if it is not man-made mistreatment—or is the correct moral approach keeping humans out of the equation?

I was curious to know if Brian felt that corporate America was listening to the national conversation about how animals should be treated by industries.  He was cheered by the number of animal-friendly companies that have launched sales of products that don’t result from mistreatment and the ensuing demand it creates competition for companies with traditional operations.  Sometimes, he noted with optimism, these businesses respond to such demand by also generating cruelty-free products, such as vegan food, even if only for bottom-line reasons, rather than a moral desire to treat animals compassionately.

Berkey commented that he once, while a fellow at Harvard, went to a business school discussion on animal welfare issues.  The speaker was from the Good Food Institute, which helps fund the production of substitutes for meat and dairy products.  Happily, the speaker also was one of his former students from Berkeley. 

As his academic career continues to blossom, the ethicist hopes that he will see a lot more of his students refusing to permit the mistreatment of animals—while simultaneously generating healthy profits.  Such would be a dividend in which a philosophy professor can take great pride—as well as one that might just change the world for generations of animals yet to come.  And maybe the ghosts of Michael Milken and other ethically challenged corporate leaders will dim just a bit more.