Using Ibsen in Business Ethics

Journal of Business Ethics · 2009 · Volume 84 · Issue 1

Abstract

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s death, during 2006 quite a number of cultural events were launched (cf.http://www.ibsen.net/). The article suggests celebrating Ibsen as a potentially useful resource for business ethics teaching. Departing from a short presentation of Ibsen’s playsAn enemy of the peopleandA doll’s housethe main focus of this paper is on two selected scenes from the␣latter piece – both as raw material for developing scenarios for moral maturity assessment (one of them is strikingly similar to and different from Heinz’ dilemma), and for teaching business students moral reflection and imagination. As an open end of the article a few wider questions are asked about the use of literature in addition to or instead of ethics when it comes to triggering moral reflection and imagination.

Keywords

business ethics teaching, Ibsen, moral conflict scenarios, Heinz’ dilemma

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