Moral muteness of faculty in management education

•New concept defined as a failure to express moral considerations in teaching.•One cause for this muteness is the institutionalization of teaching practices.•Students leave with the idea that morals are separate from disciplinary knowledge.

Many have long criticized management education for poorly training managers to recognize and address ethical and moral issues in the workplace and society. These criticisms point to bad management theories, institutional pressure on business schools and corporations, misdirected pedagogy and an overwhelming reliance on economic rationality in the curriculum. Researchers may not have considered the specific behaviors in the classroom, however, as a cause for poor ethical behavior. For various reasons, faculty members do not express moral considerations on many issues in the classroom. Moral muteness of faculty in management education sends a loud and clear message to aspiring managers that moral considerations are unimportant. An institutional perspective is used to develop the concept of moral muteness of faculty and explain the causes and effects of moral muteness.