CityAM - Philosophers and the fine art of business

Do businesses that are trusted make more money? Is it ever morally acceptable to lie? Is a corporation a moral agent? If so, who does that mean is responsible if it does bad things? Not the most obvious questions that you might expect to face on an MBA course, perhaps, but these sorts of quandaries are at the forefronts of the minds of the students at Cambridge’s Judge Business School who take the Philosophy in Business elective…

At McGill in Montreal, Professor Nancy Adler uses the examples of Picasso and other modernists to change the way that people think – rather than seeing business through the prism of solving problems, she encourages them to look at paintings and reflect on the way that artists try to create, rather than problem-solve.

She encourages people to see the “beauty” in leadership. At BPP in the City, they look at the way Damien Hirst used the same business model as the great painters and sculptors of the Renaissance – a studio of artists – to create his works and turn himself into one of the greatest art brands, and the richest artist, in the world.