Christmas Thoughts about Business Education

Abstract

Ebenezer Scrooge lived to be redeemed. And so we might hope it will be for a business education today that conveys many useful values and practices, but no good. I argue that business education today leaves students unprepared for a life in business because it has no moral center and thus has no basis to judge the good of business values and practices. In a word, business education lacks an idea of the supreme good of man—a summum bonum. With the help of Charles Dickens, I consider the lessons of Christmas to suggest how business education can be redeemed in the good. In the end I find that these are the lessons of the social teachings of the Church.