To the editor:

The story on business ethics education in the Journal-World (by Terry Rombeck, Nov. 28) is a good one. I appreciate your paper’s coverage of the issue. I note that the piece was posted on a national management education discussion list (which is how I found out about it).

Just for the record, Professor Paul Mason at Kansas University has framed the issue as a false dichotomy. Whole-cloth coverage of business ethics includes a required course in ethics and the kind of mention in other courses that Mason describes.

After the disruptions causes by the corporate scandals, business schools have no excuse to sidestep whole-cloth coverage, which again is: (1) to require a course in ethics and (2) attempt integration of the topic across other course work, including accounting.

Schools that do not cover ethics whole cloth are taking the easy way out, no matter how the policy is framed.

More than 200 professors and business practitioners nationally and two academic conference boards have signed on to this view.

Diane Swanson, chairwoman,

Ethics Education Initiative

College of Business,

Kansas State University, Manhattan