FN ISI Export Format VR 1.0 PT J TI The De-Ethicisation of Economics and Teaching Business Ethics AF Hühn, Matthias P. AU Hühn, MP SO Academy of Management Proceedings SN 0065-0668 VL 2014 BP 15572 PY 2014 AB This paper argues that economics as a scientific discipline has gone through three phases – each further removing it from what it clearly should be and what is was intended to be by its founder: a social science. From Adam Smith's view of economics as social science, via 19th century economics where the natural sciences were adopted as a role model (economics as social physics) to the current understanding, which seems to define economics as a formal science (economics as mathematics). Economics, and with it management, has been systematically de-socialised and de-ethicised over the past 200 years and during that time, the rational actor approach has gained unassailable paradigmatic status, despite its obvious shortcomings. Questions about the role of ethics are rarely asked as ethics plays no role in what has bee turned into a formal science. Partial critiques and especially critiques of more recent trends in business theory will not be able to shake a 200 year-old ideology. If one wants to change the way management is taught in business schools with regards to ethics and epistemology one will have to systematically address the very foundations of business theory created two hundred years ago. DI 10.5465/AMBPP.2014.15572abstract ER