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Moving from a job in a non-philosophy department to philosophy?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a grad student asks:

How do hiring committees of philosophy departments look at someone who's spent a number of years in a position (TT or non-TT, if that makes a difference) at a non-philosophy department straight out of grad school? I'm ABD and considering applying to business schools, but would prefer to end up in a philosophy department later on.

I'm interested in this in general, but given my personal circumstances could easily imagine the following: a US business school for a couple of years, then applying to philosophy departments in Western Europe.

If possible it would be helpful if you could specify the geographic area with which you have experience.

This doesn't seem like a big deal at all to me, provided you're doing broadly philosophy-like things (publishing in some philosophy journals, etc.). In fact, it might give you a further advantage on the market, as now you may look like a good fit for some departments outside of philosophy (though the OP does note they'd prefer to be in philosophy).

Anyway, what do you all think?

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4 responses to “Moving from a job in a non-philosophy department to philosophy?”

  1. humanities-type

    I think there is some risk here. Years ago we interviewed someone who was in this situation – I think he came across as a bit too “biz school”. On the one hand, he would have been an asset, dealing with senior admin types, as they are very business minded. But on the other hand, he seemed out of touch with a lot of philosophy. In a small department, this matters. The lesson: do not think you can spend 5 years in a business school and not become a different sort of person and academic.

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  2. Bill Vanderburgh

    Along these lines, the natural path in the US would be to teach Business Ethics in the business school, then specialize in applied ethics (maybe ethics?) in a philosophy department. That might work, with humanities-type’s caveats. Having a couple of years of successful teaching experience, especially in high-demand general education classes, could be attractive to some teaching-focused departments. Since applied ethics isn’t generally a subject of much interest in research-focused departments, the chances are slimmer there. A lot will depend on the extent to which business ethics or applied ethics in general is taught in Philosophy in European departments–do that research. FWIW, in the US at least, salaries tend to be higher in Business than in Philosophy.

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  3. Tom

    Not everyone believes that spending time in a business school changes you as a person. Sure, there will be places that have the view of “humanities-type”, but there will be others who recognize that you can be a good philosopher who worked in a business school. We’ve hired such a person in the past. From our perspective, the main concern we had was whether the person was prepared to teach courses other than business ethics, and your success may be dependent on how convincing you are on this point.

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  4. Seen a business environment a bit

    I can’t speak to the European context. I can say as someone with some exposure that the challenge with a lot of business schools is that you won’t have exposure regularly to folks doing excellent philosophical work and it is hard to avoid being pushed by your colleagues to do work that is not held to certain philosophical norms, for good or bad. This is not always the case (Georgetown and Wharton come to mind as having very good philosophers in business schools) but it is common. That means you may fall out of awareness of current literature etc in philosophy more quickly, or just loose a network there or have a record of writing in other areas. That seems like something you can overcome, but still a challenge.

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