Harvard Business School

Edwin F. Gay, the first dean of HBS, drew up the School’s original curriculum in the summer of 1908. He decided at that point to omit any courses specifically devoted to ethical conduct. This aroused consternation among some of the School’s supporters. Boston lawyer Frederick P. Fish, for example, argued strongly in favor of ethical instruction, particularly in the field of corporate finance. But Gay held firm:

“I decided not to have any courses on Business Ethics in the Business School, but I have tried to choose our lecturers with reference to their standards in conduct of business. I believe with you that we should give some occasional lectures which seek to give our students some light on what is at present a very perplexing and not wholly solved problem. The difficulty is to find lecturers who can handle this theme in the proper spirit, at once practical and elevating, without being ‘preachy.’”

Several months later, Seth T. Gano, personal secretary to financier Henry Lee Higginson, asked Gay for any available information on the history of business ethics. Gay responded ruefully that he had been intending to ask Gano the same question: “I am naturally interested in the topic, particularly as I am to give a talk on business ethics here [at Harvard] in March. I have been unable so far to obtain much information of value on the subject.”

In their 1915 report, the School’s Visiting Committee cited “the increasing attention being given to the vital human relationships in business,” and suggested that the faculty devote more attention to the topic. The following year, Gay did so: he and three other professors — and thirteen interested businessmen — offered “Social Factors in Business Enterprise.” Although 22 students signed up, Gay decided that the principles of Social Factors ought to be taught in the required Business Policy course; Social Factors was therefore not repeated.

Boston lawyer Galen L. Stone — who had helped organize the School’s second subscription drive — entered the debate in March 1917, when he sent Gay a pamphlet by John D. Rockefeller entitled The Personal Relation in Industry. This, said Stone, paraphrasing Rockefeller, would be an “important part of college courses which aim to fit men for business life.”

“Realizing its fundamental importance,” Gay responded, “we have had this topic in mind in the Business School and last year I undertook to give a course which we first planed to name ‘The Personal Factors in Business,’ but then decided, since a number of other points had to be taken up, to change the title to ‘Social Factors in Business Enterprise.’…This year, in order to reach a larger number of students, the main subject matter has been included in the second- year course named Business Policy.

“I find it is an extremely difficult subject to teach. It is one thing to recognize its importance, and another thing to analyze it and to see its various applications.”