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Journal of Education for Business
ISSN: 0883-2323 (Print) 1940-3356 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vjeb20
Legal Studies in Business: Toward Realizing Its
Potential in the New Millennium
James F. Morgan
To cite this article: James F. Morgan (2003) Legal Studies in Business: Toward Realizing Its
Potential in the New Millennium, Journal of Education for Business, 78:5, 285-289, DOI:
10.1080/08832320309598615
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08832320309598615
Published online: 31 Mar 2010.
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Date: 12 January 2016, At: 23:55
Legal Studies in Business:
Toward Realizing Its Potential
in the New Millennium
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JAMES F. MORGAN
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California State University
Chico, California
W
hether known as “business law,”
“the legal environment of business,” or the now preferred title of
“legal studies in business,” curriculum
content devoted to studying the legal
aspects of business is a critical aspect of
a university-level business student’s
education. However, the legal studies in
business discipline continues to assume
an inferior position in the minds of
many who teach and administer within
colleges of business. As one member of
the discipline related, the legal studies
in business discipline is regarded all too
often as “the Poor Stepchild of the College of Business” (Epstein, 1996, p.
229). Overlooking the derogatory connotation associated with this description, the metaphor effectively captures
two popular perceptions: (a) Offerings
from the discipline are a well-accepted
component of standard undergraduate
business curricula, and (b) the field has
yet to attain status equal to that of “traditional” business disciplines such as
marketing, management, and accounting. The relegated status of the legal
studies in business discipline only belies
a more fundamental reality: The full
potential contribution of the discipline
to collegiate business education has yet
to be realized.
The undergraduate business core typically requires students to complete a
course devoted to the legal aspects of
ABSTRACT. Legal studies in business has long been relegated to the
second tier among fields of business
study. With law and business increasingly overlapping and intertwining,
the author of this study sought to
investigate whether legal studies in
business deserves first-tier status
among business disciplines. The
author discusses the growing importance of law to business, real and perceived rationales for business law’s
relegated status, and the discovery of a
significant shortfall within the discipline. He offers suggestions that may
allow the discipline to reach its full
promise.
tethered to an archaic and myopic view
of its role in the modern business curriculum. In an age in which the worlds
of law and business increasingly overlap
and intertwine, I saw the need for an
investigation of why this discipline is
regarded as a second-class citizen. In
this article, I (a) examine the importance of legal studies in business to the
business curriculum, (b) analyze the
challenges associated with raising the
field’s stature to one equal with traditional business disciplines, and, finally,
(c) offer a series of recommendations
aimed at propelling the discipline to a
place commensurate with its critical
role in today’s business world.
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business, and it is not uncommon to find
required or elective courses dealing
with employment law, commercial law,
cyber law, and other legal areas. Little
doubt exists, therefore, that the discipline has a firm foothold within the
business school curriculum. The far
more critical issue is whether students
are exposed to the full range of disciplinary knowledge, skills, and values necessary for future members of the business community to function effectively.
Throughout the last 40 years, there
have been widespread and consistent
pleas for the discipline to evolve substantially to completely meet the needs
of today’s dynamic and complex world
of business. Nevertheless, the legal
studies in business discipline remains
The Importance of Legal Studies
in Business
The legal studies in business discipline has been a part of university-level
business education since the inception
of the collegiate school of business. In
1881, when Joseph Wharton provided
the funds to start the first college of
business, he mandated that the curriculum include five areas of study, “one of
which was business law” (Siedel, Hildebrandt, & Miller, 1984, p. 263). Just as
legal studies in business was considered
important to collegiate business education when the first curriculum was
established, the need for business stu-
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dents to understand the role of law in
commerce is at least as germane today.
In a report recently commissioned by
the Academy of Legal Studies in Business, a team of highly respected scholars found that the need for the legal
studies in business “product” was
exceedingly strong (Reed, Maurer,
O’Hara, Reitzel, & Staff, 1998). The
report concluded that for “the daily
practice of accounting, finance, information systems, management, and marketing graduates, law is inescapable and
omnipresent.” A number of different
sources supported the proposition that
law is a prominent component of modem business decisionmaking. Perhaps
most interesting was the report’s reference to a Wall Street Journal content
analysis revealing that 46.4% of the articles examined concerned either law or a
law-related subject.
Analytical and empirical research
spanning more than 2 decades bolsters
the proposition that legal studies in
business is a necessary component of
the modern business school curriculum.
Elliott and Wolfe (1981, p. 154) found
“general agreement in the literature that
instruction in law (especially within colleges of business) is needed.” In a similar vein, Allison (1991, p. 239) declared
legal studies in business “a vital component of professional business education,
whether at the undergraduate or MBA
level.” Moreover, surveys of business
school alumni (Yeargain & Tanner,
1990), corporate counsels (Moore &
Gillen, 1985), and corporate leaders
(Massin, 1989-1990) revealed that
respondents touted highly the virtues of
exposure to legal studies in business
subject areas. Finally, Siedel (2000, p.
742) reported that top-level “managers
from a variety of industries, companies,
functions and countries conclude that
law ranks among the three most valuable subjects in the core curriculum.”
Siedel further noted that “[wlhile business students rarely major in legal studies, law is eflectively a minor for every
future manager [italics added] because
it pervades business decision-making
and operations” (p. 741).
If members of the business community view legal aspects of business as significant, why do business faculty members and administrators find it difficult
to see the importance of law in business? Petty and Mandel(l992) provided
a partial answer by concluding that
“business law faculty do not teach law
in such a way that its importance is easily recognized by business students or
business faculty of other disciplines” (p.
205). I examine this rationale, along
with several others.
The assertions that the JD degree is
inappropriate and that discipline courses can be staffed with local attorneys are
both fatally flawed. Business schools
across the spectrum of perceived quality
and reputation have held, and continue
to hold, to the view that academicians
possessing the JD degree are valued faculty members within a university-level
business school. In addition to the longstanding view that faculty members
possessing the JD degree are properly
qualified to teach legal studies in business topics, extant American Assembly
of Collegiate Schools of Business
(AACSB, now renamed “AACSB-The
International Association for Management Education”) accreditation standards provide that the JD is an appropriate terminal degree for faculty members
who teach within that subject area
(AACSB, 2000, section FD.5[1]).
As to the second point, although
adjunct faculty members commonly are
hired to address a single course requiring particular practical expertise or to
meet unexpected short-term demand for
a standard legal studies in business
course, the idea of staffhg all or a large
percentage of the discipline’s courses
with part-time individuals from the
legal community is normally rejected.
Siedel (2000) identified one popular
rationale supporting the common custom of hiring full-time professors for
legal studies in business: “[A] law
course taught by a local practitioner
from the perspective of a local jurisdiction is inadequate-and possibly detrimental-to
the careers of students
intent on creating shareholder value in a
global economy” (pp. 739-740). The
practice of law, which is usually the
principal focus of the part-time instructor, can also cause a lack of adequate
preparation time for class, cancelled
classes, a failure to meet office hours,
and the creation of a learning environment dominated by too many “legal stories’’ and too little time devoted to
broader, law-related business principles.
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286
Rationales Explaining the
Perceived Relegated Status of
the Discipline
With a well-established history of
recognizing the necessity of exposing
business students to legal studies in
business, and with a strong rationale for
presently requiring at least one course
from the discipline, why do business
school colleagues disparagingly refer to
the legal studies in business discipline
as “the Other” when listing business
disciplines (Epstein, 1996, p. 226)? Or,
to use a slightly less demeaning terminology, why is the field viewed as orbiting outside the nucleus of “true” business disciplines?
An Obvious, Easy, and Wrong
Rationale
The most often stated rationale supporting the view that the legal studies in
business field does not belong in the
inner circle of true business disciplines
is that instructors in the field lack the
appropriate terminal degree. Ninety percent of the faculty members who teach
in the discipline possess the Juris Doctor (JD) degree, with only 8% of all
legal studies in business instructors
holding a PhD (Hill, Lavin, & Samuels,
1995, p. 5). Upon cursory analysis, it is
understandable that college of business
faculty members outside the discipline
might believe that, for a discipline to
qualify as first tier, the faculty members
teaching it must possess an earned doctorate in business. Compounding this
problem for the legal studies in business
professorate, lawyers in the community
possess the same JD degree as those
often tenured in the discipline, causing
business school faculty members and
administrators to wonder why practicing attorneys are not hired to teach the
subject area.
The Shrouded, Dificult, and True
Rationale
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Journal of Education for Business
If the terminal degree normally possessed by the discipline’s faculty members is not the actual reason for the rel-
egated status of the field, what is? The
investigation should commence with an
examination of which knowledge, skills,
and values from the legal studies in business discipline are necessary for a successful career in business. In the past,
members of the legal studies in business
discipline have answered this inquiry
with a constricted list of primary educational objectives (knowledge, skills, attitudes) based largely on the graduate education (i.e., the JD degree) completed by
members of the discipline. College of
business colleagues from outside the
discipline have tacitly agreed to this
incomplete list of goals for the discipline, not desiring to challenge the “turf’
of members from another discipline. As
a result, academicians have failed to
grasp fully exactly what the discipline
ought to be adding to the education of
collegiate business students.
The notion that legal studies in business should recast itself in light of the
needs of the business community is not
new. Before 1960, the legal studies in
business discipline largely believed that
students in discipline-based courses
should be exposed solely to “private
law” subjects, including such topics as
the law of contracts, torts, corporations,
and property, which are core offerings
of a law school education. However, as
a result of two highly influential Ford
Foundation sponsored reports published
in 1959 on the state of business education, the legal studies in business discipline was shaken to its core.
Gordon and Howell (1959) suggested
that the required legal studies in business course move away from covering
laws affecting market transactions and
organizational structure and, instead,
present an examination of the “nonmarket environment of business” (p. 204).
The authors of the report envisioned a
substitution of the traditional required
“business law” course with one that
would present broader areas of law
affecting the business community. This
course, which would be positioned
under the general heading of “public
law,” would cover such topics as laws
covering antitrust, employment, securities regulation, and consumer protection. In addition to covering legal topics
relating largely to the rights of parties
dealing with each other, students of
business need to understand the growing area of governmental regulation of
business.
In the same year, Pierson (1959) followed the thrust of the Gordon and
Howell report by recommending that,
though private law topics could be covered, far greater emphasis should be
placed on public law topics relevant to
business. The authors of the Pierson
report went further by suggesting that
the new course be housed within the
political science department rather than
a college of business in order to stress
the public law orientation of the desired
legal studies in business curriculum.
Both reports recommended that public law topics be included within the
legal studies in business curriculum. But
equally important to the authors of the
two reports was a second area of greatly needed improvement. The Gordon
and Howell report asked that legal studies in business courses provide students
with an understanding of “the background, importance, and role of law in
our society . . . and the evolution of legal
attitudes toward business, including the
changing relations between business
and government” (p. 205). The authors
presciently recognized that business students in the later part of the last century
would function in an era requiring
“broad and farsighted business leadership that comprehends how the present
evolved out of the past and is evolving
into the future” (p. 205). A similar thrust
for the discipline was suggested in the
Pearson report, which asked that
coursework provide students with coverage of “how the great themes in the
development of jurisprudence parallel
and fuse with the changing position of
business in society” (p. 212). This second area of desired improvement
reflected in both reports might best be
termed “developmental law.”
The response of the legal studies in
business discipline to the two suggestions made in the 1959 reports was slow
to evolve (Kempin, 1973). Movement
toward embracing the first suggestionto include public law topics along with
private law subjects, especially in core
requirement coursework-was assisted
greatly in 1969 by the AACSB’s
requirement that business students be
exposed to the “legal environment”
within the “Common Body of Knowledge Requirement.” Though some colleges of business in the 1970s experimented with omitting most private law
topics and concentrating chiefly on public law concerns, Buchanan (1983)
found that the most common approach
to teaching the required course after the
AACSB pronouncement was to offer a
hybrid containing both private and public law subjects. But what of the second
significant change of direction posited
by the authors of the two reports? What
of the need to teach developmental law?
On this score, the legal studies in business discipline failed to retrieve the
gauntlet.
In 1988, another major study of business education critiqued the progress
made by collegiate business education
in addressing concerns expressed in the
two 1959 reports. Notably, Porter and
McKibbin (1988) found that the failure
of business schools to provide sufficient
attention to the external (legal, social,
political) environment was one of seven
specific curricular criticisms of management education. According to the Porter
and McKibbin report, “some of the
most serious problems for American
Business f m s in the last decade” were
caused by “mismanaged relations with
various aspects of the social, political,
and legal environment” (p. 66). Once
again, scholars found the need for the
business curriculum to include developmental aspects of the relationship
between law and business.
As the new millennium begins, the
legal studies in business discipline continues to address private law topics, has
fully incorporated public law subjects
into its curriculum as a result of the
1959 reports and the AACSB requirement, and ignores entirely developmental law. That is, the discipline has constructed a stool with only two legs. A
two-legged stool is functional-if it is
used only for sitting and extra effort is
supplied. But such a stool is not built to
meet fully all of its possible uses.
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An Understandable Failure to
Recognize the Full Purpose
Both 1959 reports called for legal
studies in business courses to examine
the dynamic and ever-changing interre-
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lationship between law and business. In
essence, these reports were indicating
that future members of the business
community need to understand the
development of legal rights and responsibilities affecting business, in addition
to learning relevant existing legal precepts (i.e., private and public law). The
Porter and McKibbin (1988) report
pleaded for business schools to broaden
their scope of desired learning objectives relating to the external environment of business by addressing political
and social dimensions to a greater
degree, perhaps because these two areas
are the major forces that develop the
legal environment. According to the
Porter and McKibbin report, business
school curricula were failing to teach
the “important developments [italics
added] in the external context in which
modern-day business organizations
must operate” (p. 66). The study of
developmental law would provide business students with an understanding of
the forces that created the statutes,
formed the administrative regulations,
and were integral to court decisions
influencing how business is conducted.
Developmental law is an area of law
unfamiliar to those possessing the JD
degree. As Reed (1993, pp. 194-195)
eloquently stated, individuals who have
matriculated through law school are
trained “only in the latest interpretation
of the rule-the
last decision in the
jurisdiction-and
nothing
else.”
Because the purpose of law school is to
train individuals to become lawyers
such that they can advise clients effectively, the lawyer’s education is directed
primarily at presenting the current state
of the law, not societal forces that
shaped it into its present form. For
example, a law school course might
include the study of pertinent wording
from the Americans with Disabilities
Act and important U.S. Supreme Court
decisions interpreting the statute. But
the social and political factors that influenced Congress to draft and approve the
statute, along with an understanding of
the ramifications of the law on business
or societv that minht
necessitate
”
changes in’the law, would rarely receive
attention.
Naturally, members of the legal studies in business discipline shape the con-
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tours of the discipline that they teach by
relying tremendously on their law
school training. The result of such
reliance, though, is that the discipline
limits itself too much to teaching law
instead of legal aspects of business. Further, Petty and Mandel (1992, p. 206)
surmised the following:
While lawyers understand the importance
of these legal concepts, our colleagues,
whose business education may have
included no courses in law whatsoever,
may not. Similarly, their importance does
not necessarily jump out at the undergraduate or even graduate business students.
too naively, we find it dificult to accept
the implication of this question-that the
faculty members concerned, all trained in
the law, cannot widen their mental horizons enough to give the kind of course
proposed here.’’ [Italics added] (Gordon
& Howell, p. 206)
If Gordon and Howell believed that
legal studies in business faculty members could “widen their mental horizons” in 1959, certainly members of the
discipline today possess the ability to
embark on the study and teaching of
developmental law. Once the initial distress is processed, legal studies in business faculty members should view the
proposed change in the discipline as a
considerable opportunity both to
improve the stature of the discipline in
the eyes of their colleagues and, more
important, to advance the quality of
education offered to business students.
Removing existing disciplinary blinders
(a byproduct of successful completion
of law school) will open the legal studies in business faculty member to an
exciting perspective on his or her chosen field.
The next step requires the legal studies in business faculty member to
explore fully the previously uncharted
“developmental law” aspects of the discipline, reflecting on historical, current,
and future dimensions. Faculty members should teach the interplay that has
transpired between law and business
over past decades and centuries for the
purpose of inculcating in students a
sense of the endless array of influences
that affected both law and business
(e.g., technology, politics, economics,
and social mores). Similarly, as students
are exposed to private and public legal
doctrines prevalent in today’s world of
commerce, discipline faculty members
also should provide students with an
understanding of how business influences those doctrines and, equally
important, how the doctrines affect
business. Finally, instruction in developmental law will necessarily equip students to anticipate future possible directions of business-law interaction.
Legal studies in business faculty
members are cautioned, however, not to
attempt to fashion the developmental
law aspects of their legal studies in business program on their own. Though
legal studies in business generally is
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288
The importance of law to the business
world is not clear because the legal studies in business faculty members are not
building sufficient bridges of relevancy to
either constituency: business school colleagues or, more importantly, business
students.
Achieving the Discipline’s Full
Promise
Members of the legal studies in business discipline, in partial collaboration
with colleagues from other business disciplines, are well poised to meet fully
the current and future needs of the business community. Only two steps are
necessary, but both require considerable
effort. The first step requires legal studies in business faculty members to
remove the blinders created by their law
school education. Instead of only
attempting to bring the classroom a
“mini law school” approach consisting
of presenting private and public laws
pertinent to those planning to embark on
a career in business, discipline faculty
members must provide another dimension necessary to the education of those
not training to become lawyers. They
should embark on a study of law that
will require thinking in a novel manner.
Factoring developmental law into the
well-established parameters of the legal
studies in business discipline is a considerable undertaking. However, in discussing its necessary evolution, it is
interesting to note the following hauntingly relevant passage, written in 1959:
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Journal of Education for Business
We have been impressed, however, by the
fact that one objective in particular has
been raised SO many times to any drastic
change in the law requirement. “If we
adopt this suggestion,” we have been
asked reDeatedlv. “what will we do with
our teachers 0; business law?’ Perhaps
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termed a “service” discipline, its members now must embrace a heightened
level of support for companion business
disciplines. This does not mean, necessarily, that we should follow McGrail’s
(1965) admonition that legal studies in
business be taught solely from “the
business . . . point of view” (p. 109).
Instead, the overarching principle inherent in the move to incorporate developmental law is simply to move the content of the legal studies in business
discipline further away from law and
more toward business on the law-business continuum. The essence of developmental law is the more complete
examination of the relationship between
law and business, which necessarily
means that members of the discipline
would become more aware of those
aspects of “traditional” business disciplines affected by law. Success is possible only when a strong partnership is
created between those within the legal
studies in business discipline and business colleagues from other disciplines.
Specifically, a greater alignment of
the subjects taught within the legal
studies in business discipline with
other business disciplines will be
attained most easily and most effectively if legal studies in business faculty
members survey their business school
colleagues. Soliciting the perceptions
of business school colleagues to develop learning goals and objectives is not
a novel idea. Donnell (1984), for example, suggested that such surveys provide excellent information that might
be employed in the design of a legal
studies in business curriculum. Interestingly, despite the discipline’s soliciting of opinions on its most appropriate
desired learning outcomes from members of the business community (Little
& Daughtrey, 1995), business school
alumni (Yeargain & Tanner, 1990), and
corporate legal counsels (Moore &
Gillen, 1985), no survey has been published that presents the views of business school colleagues.
The lack of empirical data on the
views of business school colleagues is
unfortunate because various discipline
perspectives can offer rich insight. For
example, business school colleagues’
perspectives on the legal principles
directly affecting a discipline (e.g., Title
VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act within
the human resource management field)
or covered within the context of legally
related topics (e.g., privacy concerns
pertinent to soliciting information for
marketing research) would shape greatly the approaches taken to teaching relevant developmental law principles.
Moreover, such information would
affect the coverage provided on extant
private and public law topics.
Conclusion
Almost 30 years ago, Kempin (1973,
p. 26) observed that professors of the
legal studies in business discipline “are
on periphery of business education” and
that the discipline is “not fully recognized as a profession.” Regrettably,
apparently little has changed as we
begin a new millennium. Furthermore,
the failure of the discipline to achieve
full status within the academy only
belies a much more important point:
Legal studies in business has not realized its full potential in serving the educational needs of the modem collegiate
business student.
The law continues to play an increasingly larger role in business decision
making. Unfortunately, the legal studies
in business discipline has failed to communicate sufficiently the law’s growing
importance and, more critically, does
not teach developmental aspects of the
discipline that address significantly the
interrelationship between law and business. With visionary leadership, a prodigious amount of hard work, and a strong
outreach program to college of business
faculty colleagues, the legal studies in
business discipline can add to its field
the missing element that will not only
secure its status as a first-tier academic
discipline but also provide disciplinebased education of the highest quality.
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Donnell, J. D. (1984). Redesigning the required
undergraduate business law course. Journal of
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Elliott, W. G., & Wolfe, A. (1981). The need for
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Epstein, E. M. (1996). We’ve come a long way . . .
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May/June 2003
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ISSN: 0883-2323 (Print) 1940-3356 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vjeb20
Legal Studies in Business: Toward Realizing Its
Potential in the New Millennium
James F. Morgan
To cite this article: James F. Morgan (2003) Legal Studies in Business: Toward Realizing Its
Potential in the New Millennium, Journal of Education for Business, 78:5, 285-289, DOI:
10.1080/08832320309598615
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Date: 12 January 2016, At: 23:55
Legal Studies in Business:
Toward Realizing Its Potential
in the New Millennium
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JAMES F. MORGAN
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California State University
Chico, California
W
hether known as “business law,”
“the legal environment of business,” or the now preferred title of
“legal studies in business,” curriculum
content devoted to studying the legal
aspects of business is a critical aspect of
a university-level business student’s
education. However, the legal studies in
business discipline continues to assume
an inferior position in the minds of
many who teach and administer within
colleges of business. As one member of
the discipline related, the legal studies
in business discipline is regarded all too
often as “the Poor Stepchild of the College of Business” (Epstein, 1996, p.
229). Overlooking the derogatory connotation associated with this description, the metaphor effectively captures
two popular perceptions: (a) Offerings
from the discipline are a well-accepted
component of standard undergraduate
business curricula, and (b) the field has
yet to attain status equal to that of “traditional” business disciplines such as
marketing, management, and accounting. The relegated status of the legal
studies in business discipline only belies
a more fundamental reality: The full
potential contribution of the discipline
to collegiate business education has yet
to be realized.
The undergraduate business core typically requires students to complete a
course devoted to the legal aspects of
ABSTRACT. Legal studies in business has long been relegated to the
second tier among fields of business
study. With law and business increasingly overlapping and intertwining,
the author of this study sought to
investigate whether legal studies in
business deserves first-tier status
among business disciplines. The
author discusses the growing importance of law to business, real and perceived rationales for business law’s
relegated status, and the discovery of a
significant shortfall within the discipline. He offers suggestions that may
allow the discipline to reach its full
promise.
tethered to an archaic and myopic view
of its role in the modern business curriculum. In an age in which the worlds
of law and business increasingly overlap
and intertwine, I saw the need for an
investigation of why this discipline is
regarded as a second-class citizen. In
this article, I (a) examine the importance of legal studies in business to the
business curriculum, (b) analyze the
challenges associated with raising the
field’s stature to one equal with traditional business disciplines, and, finally,
(c) offer a series of recommendations
aimed at propelling the discipline to a
place commensurate with its critical
role in today’s business world.
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business, and it is not uncommon to find
required or elective courses dealing
with employment law, commercial law,
cyber law, and other legal areas. Little
doubt exists, therefore, that the discipline has a firm foothold within the
business school curriculum. The far
more critical issue is whether students
are exposed to the full range of disciplinary knowledge, skills, and values necessary for future members of the business community to function effectively.
Throughout the last 40 years, there
have been widespread and consistent
pleas for the discipline to evolve substantially to completely meet the needs
of today’s dynamic and complex world
of business. Nevertheless, the legal
studies in business discipline remains
The Importance of Legal Studies
in Business
The legal studies in business discipline has been a part of university-level
business education since the inception
of the collegiate school of business. In
1881, when Joseph Wharton provided
the funds to start the first college of
business, he mandated that the curriculum include five areas of study, “one of
which was business law” (Siedel, Hildebrandt, & Miller, 1984, p. 263). Just as
legal studies in business was considered
important to collegiate business education when the first curriculum was
established, the need for business stu-
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dents to understand the role of law in
commerce is at least as germane today.
In a report recently commissioned by
the Academy of Legal Studies in Business, a team of highly respected scholars found that the need for the legal
studies in business “product” was
exceedingly strong (Reed, Maurer,
O’Hara, Reitzel, & Staff, 1998). The
report concluded that for “the daily
practice of accounting, finance, information systems, management, and marketing graduates, law is inescapable and
omnipresent.” A number of different
sources supported the proposition that
law is a prominent component of modem business decisionmaking. Perhaps
most interesting was the report’s reference to a Wall Street Journal content
analysis revealing that 46.4% of the articles examined concerned either law or a
law-related subject.
Analytical and empirical research
spanning more than 2 decades bolsters
the proposition that legal studies in
business is a necessary component of
the modern business school curriculum.
Elliott and Wolfe (1981, p. 154) found
“general agreement in the literature that
instruction in law (especially within colleges of business) is needed.” In a similar vein, Allison (1991, p. 239) declared
legal studies in business “a vital component of professional business education,
whether at the undergraduate or MBA
level.” Moreover, surveys of business
school alumni (Yeargain & Tanner,
1990), corporate counsels (Moore &
Gillen, 1985), and corporate leaders
(Massin, 1989-1990) revealed that
respondents touted highly the virtues of
exposure to legal studies in business
subject areas. Finally, Siedel (2000, p.
742) reported that top-level “managers
from a variety of industries, companies,
functions and countries conclude that
law ranks among the three most valuable subjects in the core curriculum.”
Siedel further noted that “[wlhile business students rarely major in legal studies, law is eflectively a minor for every
future manager [italics added] because
it pervades business decision-making
and operations” (p. 741).
If members of the business community view legal aspects of business as significant, why do business faculty members and administrators find it difficult
to see the importance of law in business? Petty and Mandel(l992) provided
a partial answer by concluding that
“business law faculty do not teach law
in such a way that its importance is easily recognized by business students or
business faculty of other disciplines” (p.
205). I examine this rationale, along
with several others.
The assertions that the JD degree is
inappropriate and that discipline courses can be staffed with local attorneys are
both fatally flawed. Business schools
across the spectrum of perceived quality
and reputation have held, and continue
to hold, to the view that academicians
possessing the JD degree are valued faculty members within a university-level
business school. In addition to the longstanding view that faculty members
possessing the JD degree are properly
qualified to teach legal studies in business topics, extant American Assembly
of Collegiate Schools of Business
(AACSB, now renamed “AACSB-The
International Association for Management Education”) accreditation standards provide that the JD is an appropriate terminal degree for faculty members
who teach within that subject area
(AACSB, 2000, section FD.5[1]).
As to the second point, although
adjunct faculty members commonly are
hired to address a single course requiring particular practical expertise or to
meet unexpected short-term demand for
a standard legal studies in business
course, the idea of staffhg all or a large
percentage of the discipline’s courses
with part-time individuals from the
legal community is normally rejected.
Siedel (2000) identified one popular
rationale supporting the common custom of hiring full-time professors for
legal studies in business: “[A] law
course taught by a local practitioner
from the perspective of a local jurisdiction is inadequate-and possibly detrimental-to
the careers of students
intent on creating shareholder value in a
global economy” (pp. 739-740). The
practice of law, which is usually the
principal focus of the part-time instructor, can also cause a lack of adequate
preparation time for class, cancelled
classes, a failure to meet office hours,
and the creation of a learning environment dominated by too many “legal stories’’ and too little time devoted to
broader, law-related business principles.
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286
Rationales Explaining the
Perceived Relegated Status of
the Discipline
With a well-established history of
recognizing the necessity of exposing
business students to legal studies in
business, and with a strong rationale for
presently requiring at least one course
from the discipline, why do business
school colleagues disparagingly refer to
the legal studies in business discipline
as “the Other” when listing business
disciplines (Epstein, 1996, p. 226)? Or,
to use a slightly less demeaning terminology, why is the field viewed as orbiting outside the nucleus of “true” business disciplines?
An Obvious, Easy, and Wrong
Rationale
The most often stated rationale supporting the view that the legal studies in
business field does not belong in the
inner circle of true business disciplines
is that instructors in the field lack the
appropriate terminal degree. Ninety percent of the faculty members who teach
in the discipline possess the Juris Doctor (JD) degree, with only 8% of all
legal studies in business instructors
holding a PhD (Hill, Lavin, & Samuels,
1995, p. 5). Upon cursory analysis, it is
understandable that college of business
faculty members outside the discipline
might believe that, for a discipline to
qualify as first tier, the faculty members
teaching it must possess an earned doctorate in business. Compounding this
problem for the legal studies in business
professorate, lawyers in the community
possess the same JD degree as those
often tenured in the discipline, causing
business school faculty members and
administrators to wonder why practicing attorneys are not hired to teach the
subject area.
The Shrouded, Dificult, and True
Rationale
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Journal of Education for Business
If the terminal degree normally possessed by the discipline’s faculty members is not the actual reason for the rel-
egated status of the field, what is? The
investigation should commence with an
examination of which knowledge, skills,
and values from the legal studies in business discipline are necessary for a successful career in business. In the past,
members of the legal studies in business
discipline have answered this inquiry
with a constricted list of primary educational objectives (knowledge, skills, attitudes) based largely on the graduate education (i.e., the JD degree) completed by
members of the discipline. College of
business colleagues from outside the
discipline have tacitly agreed to this
incomplete list of goals for the discipline, not desiring to challenge the “turf’
of members from another discipline. As
a result, academicians have failed to
grasp fully exactly what the discipline
ought to be adding to the education of
collegiate business students.
The notion that legal studies in business should recast itself in light of the
needs of the business community is not
new. Before 1960, the legal studies in
business discipline largely believed that
students in discipline-based courses
should be exposed solely to “private
law” subjects, including such topics as
the law of contracts, torts, corporations,
and property, which are core offerings
of a law school education. However, as
a result of two highly influential Ford
Foundation sponsored reports published
in 1959 on the state of business education, the legal studies in business discipline was shaken to its core.
Gordon and Howell (1959) suggested
that the required legal studies in business course move away from covering
laws affecting market transactions and
organizational structure and, instead,
present an examination of the “nonmarket environment of business” (p. 204).
The authors of the report envisioned a
substitution of the traditional required
“business law” course with one that
would present broader areas of law
affecting the business community. This
course, which would be positioned
under the general heading of “public
law,” would cover such topics as laws
covering antitrust, employment, securities regulation, and consumer protection. In addition to covering legal topics
relating largely to the rights of parties
dealing with each other, students of
business need to understand the growing area of governmental regulation of
business.
In the same year, Pierson (1959) followed the thrust of the Gordon and
Howell report by recommending that,
though private law topics could be covered, far greater emphasis should be
placed on public law topics relevant to
business. The authors of the Pierson
report went further by suggesting that
the new course be housed within the
political science department rather than
a college of business in order to stress
the public law orientation of the desired
legal studies in business curriculum.
Both reports recommended that public law topics be included within the
legal studies in business curriculum. But
equally important to the authors of the
two reports was a second area of greatly needed improvement. The Gordon
and Howell report asked that legal studies in business courses provide students
with an understanding of “the background, importance, and role of law in
our society . . . and the evolution of legal
attitudes toward business, including the
changing relations between business
and government” (p. 205). The authors
presciently recognized that business students in the later part of the last century
would function in an era requiring
“broad and farsighted business leadership that comprehends how the present
evolved out of the past and is evolving
into the future” (p. 205). A similar thrust
for the discipline was suggested in the
Pearson report, which asked that
coursework provide students with coverage of “how the great themes in the
development of jurisprudence parallel
and fuse with the changing position of
business in society” (p. 212). This second area of desired improvement
reflected in both reports might best be
termed “developmental law.”
The response of the legal studies in
business discipline to the two suggestions made in the 1959 reports was slow
to evolve (Kempin, 1973). Movement
toward embracing the first suggestionto include public law topics along with
private law subjects, especially in core
requirement coursework-was assisted
greatly in 1969 by the AACSB’s
requirement that business students be
exposed to the “legal environment”
within the “Common Body of Knowledge Requirement.” Though some colleges of business in the 1970s experimented with omitting most private law
topics and concentrating chiefly on public law concerns, Buchanan (1983)
found that the most common approach
to teaching the required course after the
AACSB pronouncement was to offer a
hybrid containing both private and public law subjects. But what of the second
significant change of direction posited
by the authors of the two reports? What
of the need to teach developmental law?
On this score, the legal studies in business discipline failed to retrieve the
gauntlet.
In 1988, another major study of business education critiqued the progress
made by collegiate business education
in addressing concerns expressed in the
two 1959 reports. Notably, Porter and
McKibbin (1988) found that the failure
of business schools to provide sufficient
attention to the external (legal, social,
political) environment was one of seven
specific curricular criticisms of management education. According to the Porter
and McKibbin report, “some of the
most serious problems for American
Business f m s in the last decade” were
caused by “mismanaged relations with
various aspects of the social, political,
and legal environment” (p. 66). Once
again, scholars found the need for the
business curriculum to include developmental aspects of the relationship
between law and business.
As the new millennium begins, the
legal studies in business discipline continues to address private law topics, has
fully incorporated public law subjects
into its curriculum as a result of the
1959 reports and the AACSB requirement, and ignores entirely developmental law. That is, the discipline has constructed a stool with only two legs. A
two-legged stool is functional-if it is
used only for sitting and extra effort is
supplied. But such a stool is not built to
meet fully all of its possible uses.
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An Understandable Failure to
Recognize the Full Purpose
Both 1959 reports called for legal
studies in business courses to examine
the dynamic and ever-changing interre-
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lationship between law and business. In
essence, these reports were indicating
that future members of the business
community need to understand the
development of legal rights and responsibilities affecting business, in addition
to learning relevant existing legal precepts (i.e., private and public law). The
Porter and McKibbin (1988) report
pleaded for business schools to broaden
their scope of desired learning objectives relating to the external environment of business by addressing political
and social dimensions to a greater
degree, perhaps because these two areas
are the major forces that develop the
legal environment. According to the
Porter and McKibbin report, business
school curricula were failing to teach
the “important developments [italics
added] in the external context in which
modern-day business organizations
must operate” (p. 66). The study of
developmental law would provide business students with an understanding of
the forces that created the statutes,
formed the administrative regulations,
and were integral to court decisions
influencing how business is conducted.
Developmental law is an area of law
unfamiliar to those possessing the JD
degree. As Reed (1993, pp. 194-195)
eloquently stated, individuals who have
matriculated through law school are
trained “only in the latest interpretation
of the rule-the
last decision in the
jurisdiction-and
nothing
else.”
Because the purpose of law school is to
train individuals to become lawyers
such that they can advise clients effectively, the lawyer’s education is directed
primarily at presenting the current state
of the law, not societal forces that
shaped it into its present form. For
example, a law school course might
include the study of pertinent wording
from the Americans with Disabilities
Act and important U.S. Supreme Court
decisions interpreting the statute. But
the social and political factors that influenced Congress to draft and approve the
statute, along with an understanding of
the ramifications of the law on business
or societv that minht
necessitate
”
changes in’the law, would rarely receive
attention.
Naturally, members of the legal studies in business discipline shape the con-
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tours of the discipline that they teach by
relying tremendously on their law
school training. The result of such
reliance, though, is that the discipline
limits itself too much to teaching law
instead of legal aspects of business. Further, Petty and Mandel (1992, p. 206)
surmised the following:
While lawyers understand the importance
of these legal concepts, our colleagues,
whose business education may have
included no courses in law whatsoever,
may not. Similarly, their importance does
not necessarily jump out at the undergraduate or even graduate business students.
too naively, we find it dificult to accept
the implication of this question-that the
faculty members concerned, all trained in
the law, cannot widen their mental horizons enough to give the kind of course
proposed here.’’ [Italics added] (Gordon
& Howell, p. 206)
If Gordon and Howell believed that
legal studies in business faculty members could “widen their mental horizons” in 1959, certainly members of the
discipline today possess the ability to
embark on the study and teaching of
developmental law. Once the initial distress is processed, legal studies in business faculty members should view the
proposed change in the discipline as a
considerable opportunity both to
improve the stature of the discipline in
the eyes of their colleagues and, more
important, to advance the quality of
education offered to business students.
Removing existing disciplinary blinders
(a byproduct of successful completion
of law school) will open the legal studies in business faculty member to an
exciting perspective on his or her chosen field.
The next step requires the legal studies in business faculty member to
explore fully the previously uncharted
“developmental law” aspects of the discipline, reflecting on historical, current,
and future dimensions. Faculty members should teach the interplay that has
transpired between law and business
over past decades and centuries for the
purpose of inculcating in students a
sense of the endless array of influences
that affected both law and business
(e.g., technology, politics, economics,
and social mores). Similarly, as students
are exposed to private and public legal
doctrines prevalent in today’s world of
commerce, discipline faculty members
also should provide students with an
understanding of how business influences those doctrines and, equally
important, how the doctrines affect
business. Finally, instruction in developmental law will necessarily equip students to anticipate future possible directions of business-law interaction.
Legal studies in business faculty
members are cautioned, however, not to
attempt to fashion the developmental
law aspects of their legal studies in business program on their own. Though
legal studies in business generally is
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288
The importance of law to the business
world is not clear because the legal studies in business faculty members are not
building sufficient bridges of relevancy to
either constituency: business school colleagues or, more importantly, business
students.
Achieving the Discipline’s Full
Promise
Members of the legal studies in business discipline, in partial collaboration
with colleagues from other business disciplines, are well poised to meet fully
the current and future needs of the business community. Only two steps are
necessary, but both require considerable
effort. The first step requires legal studies in business faculty members to
remove the blinders created by their law
school education. Instead of only
attempting to bring the classroom a
“mini law school” approach consisting
of presenting private and public laws
pertinent to those planning to embark on
a career in business, discipline faculty
members must provide another dimension necessary to the education of those
not training to become lawyers. They
should embark on a study of law that
will require thinking in a novel manner.
Factoring developmental law into the
well-established parameters of the legal
studies in business discipline is a considerable undertaking. However, in discussing its necessary evolution, it is
interesting to note the following hauntingly relevant passage, written in 1959:
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Journal of Education for Business
We have been impressed, however, by the
fact that one objective in particular has
been raised SO many times to any drastic
change in the law requirement. “If we
adopt this suggestion,” we have been
asked reDeatedlv. “what will we do with
our teachers 0; business law?’ Perhaps
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termed a “service” discipline, its members now must embrace a heightened
level of support for companion business
disciplines. This does not mean, necessarily, that we should follow McGrail’s
(1965) admonition that legal studies in
business be taught solely from “the
business . . . point of view” (p. 109).
Instead, the overarching principle inherent in the move to incorporate developmental law is simply to move the content of the legal studies in business
discipline further away from law and
more toward business on the law-business continuum. The essence of developmental law is the more complete
examination of the relationship between
law and business, which necessarily
means that members of the discipline
would become more aware of those
aspects of “traditional” business disciplines affected by law. Success is possible only when a strong partnership is
created between those within the legal
studies in business discipline and business colleagues from other disciplines.
Specifically, a greater alignment of
the subjects taught within the legal
studies in business discipline with
other business disciplines will be
attained most easily and most effectively if legal studies in business faculty
members survey their business school
colleagues. Soliciting the perceptions
of business school colleagues to develop learning goals and objectives is not
a novel idea. Donnell (1984), for example, suggested that such surveys provide excellent information that might
be employed in the design of a legal
studies in business curriculum. Interestingly, despite the discipline’s soliciting of opinions on its most appropriate
desired learning outcomes from members of the business community (Little
& Daughtrey, 1995), business school
alumni (Yeargain & Tanner, 1990), and
corporate legal counsels (Moore &
Gillen, 1985), no survey has been published that presents the views of business school colleagues.
The lack of empirical data on the
views of business school colleagues is
unfortunate because various discipline
perspectives can offer rich insight. For
example, business school colleagues’
perspectives on the legal principles
directly affecting a discipline (e.g., Title
VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act within
the human resource management field)
or covered within the context of legally
related topics (e.g., privacy concerns
pertinent to soliciting information for
marketing research) would shape greatly the approaches taken to teaching relevant developmental law principles.
Moreover, such information would
affect the coverage provided on extant
private and public law topics.
Conclusion
Almost 30 years ago, Kempin (1973,
p. 26) observed that professors of the
legal studies in business discipline “are
on periphery of business education” and
that the discipline is “not fully recognized as a profession.” Regrettably,
apparently little has changed as we
begin a new millennium. Furthermore,
the failure of the discipline to achieve
full status within the academy only
belies a much more important point:
Legal studies in business has not realized its full potential in serving the educational needs of the modem collegiate
business student.
The law continues to play an increasingly larger role in business decision
making. Unfortunately, the legal studies
in business discipline has failed to communicate sufficiently the law’s growing
importance and, more critically, does
not teach developmental aspects of the
discipline that address significantly the
interrelationship between law and business. With visionary leadership, a prodigious amount of hard work, and a strong
outreach program to college of business
faculty colleagues, the legal studies in
business discipline can add to its field
the missing element that will not only
secure its status as a first-tier academic
discipline but also provide disciplinebased education of the highest quality.
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