“We’ve never heard of ‘business ethics.’”
The grant refusal by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) came swiftly and spoke volumes of the times: It was 1974 and the country under President Richard Nixon was in the thick of the Watergate scandal.
The denial didn’t dissuade W. Michael Hoffman, PhD, from flying to Washington, D.C. At age 32 and untenured, the new chair of Bentley’s Philosophy Department was far from his Kentucky roots, but rooted in his determination to bring business ethics to bear on the practice of business and in business education.
[Hoffman's] center challenged the nature of ethics research at the time, which focused on theory, not practice.
He asked to see the proposal’s evaluations. They read simply “no” or “this is an oxymoron.”
The NEH director, embarrassed by the lack of substantive feedback, asked him to reapply. Hoffman did, and got the grant. Forty years later, he and the W. Michael Hoffman Center for Business Ethics (CBE) — newly named in his honor — have helped transform Bentley and the business world.
Thomas White, recently retired professor and chair of business ethics at Loyola Marymount University, calls Hoffman “a revolutionary and a renegade.” His center challenged the nature of ethics research at the time, which focused on theory, not practice.
But “practice” helps people and “applied” is Hoffman’s beloved bread and butter.
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) was an early supporter of Hoffman’s cause. “Thirty years ago, we were one of the first big firms to begin an ethics program — the pioneers,” says Bobby Kipp, a retired partner at the company. “But we needed a pioneer to lead us.”
With help from Hoffman and the center, PwC won the American Business Ethics Award in the program’s first year.
Scores of conferences, lectures, courses, awards, publications and one-on-one meetings later, businessmen and women are bringing ideas the center has championed to workplaces everywhere. And Bentley itself has incorporated ethics into its mission statement and many of its courses. They can all thank Hoffman and the CBE for influencing how business is done.
“Our Bentley campus has been enriched by the presence of these visiting scholars.”
Hoffman, in turn, credits corporations like Raytheon and Verizon for establishing annual lectures and visiting professorships for the CBE. “Our Bentley campus has been enriched by the presence of these visiting scholars,” he says. The events are often standing room only.
His gratitude extends to the NEH for the initial push to establish business ethics at Bentley.
The Hieken Professor of Business and Professional Ethics and former winner of the Michael Mee Prize for faculty excellence, Hoffman is thankful for donors such as Chuck Hieken P ’93 and Michael Mee ’66. Their gifts are the kind that keep talented faculty — the renegades — on staff, and allow revolutionary thinking to thrive.