Sometimes you can just sense that there's a disconnect. For Christopher
Gilbert, PhD, it seemed clear that something was missing in the way ethics
were taught and practiced—in the business world and elsewhere.
Gilbert had the passion to understand why. His Capella degree gave him the
opportunity to test his ideas and the credibility to influence others.
It started when Gilbert, an experienced community college instructor and
dean, taught his first MBA-level business ethics course at a local university.
At the time, there were many high-profile business ethics problems in the
news. But his students didn't see how their own daily decisions—downloading
copyrighted materials or cutting someone off in traffic—were part of the same
ethical continuum as headline-grabbing scandals.
"There were big chunks of knowledge missing from the way people were
learning, teaching, and thinking about ethics," Gilbert says. "I realized the
key was getting people to listen to those ideas. That's when I started thinking
about the value of the doctoral credential."
"I needed a university where I could tailor my doctoral research to what I was
deeply interested in," Gilbert said. "Capella was that university."
His dissertation research showed that by teaching conflicting ethical
frameworks, traditional ethics courses were actually training people to make
worse ethical decisions.
"It's almost like they come away with a set of 'Rationalizations You Can Use,'
which is the opposite of what we need ethics courses to do. And that backed
my contention that we need a new approach to teaching ethics."
With a PhD from Capella, his speaking engagements and consulting
opportunities grew. He was invited to teach for MBA programs in China and
Switzerland.
He was also asked to join more corporate boards of directors. One of those
was the board of the first U.S. graduate school to offer an MBA in Sustainable
Business. In 2008 Gilbert was named Provost and Executive Vice President.
In addition to his academic leadership, and his consulting, speaking, and
teaching, Gilbert expects to publish a book next year, There's No Right Way
to Do the Wrong Thing. "It's to get people thinking about how they make
choices—any kind of choices."
He hopes his ideas about ethics will catch on. "We need to teach people how
to make decisions on a personal level, and how to take that process with them
when they go out the door into the world."