A Promise to Be Ethical in an Era of Immorality

What kind of an era is it when ethics are “innovation”???

When a new crop of future business leaders graduates from the Harvard Business School next week, many of them will be taking a new oath that says, in effect, greed is not good.

Nearly 20 percent of the graduating class have signed “The M.B.A. Oath,” a voluntary student-led pledge that the goal of a business manager is to “serve the greater good.” It promises that Harvard M.B.A.’s will act responsibly, ethically and refrain from advancing their “own narrow ambitions” at the expense of others.

What happened to making money?

That, of course, is still at the heart of the Harvard curriculum. But at Harvard and other top business schools, there has been an explosion of interest in ethics courses and in student activities — clubs, lectures, conferences — about personal and corporate responsibility and on how to view business as more than a money-making enterprise, but part of a large social community.

“We want to stand up and recite something out loud with our class,” said Teal Carlock, who is graduating from Harvard and has accepted a job at Genentech. “Fingers are now pointed at M.B.A.’s and we, as a class, have a real opportunity to come together and set a standard as business leaders.”

At Columbia Business School, all students must pledge to an honor code: “As a lifelong member of the Columbia Business School community, I adhere to the principles of truth, integrity, and respect. I will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.” The code has been in place for about three years and came about after discussions between students and faculty.

In the post-Enron and post-Madoff era, the issue of ethics and corporate social responsibility has taken on greater urgency among students about to graduate. While this might easily be dismissed as a passing fancy — or simply a defensive reaction to the current business environment — business school professors say that is not the case. Rather, they say, they are seeing a generational shift away from viewing an M.B.A. as simply an on-ramp to the road to riches.

Those graduating today, they say, are far more concerned about how corporations affect the community, the lives of its workers and the environment. And business schools are responding with more courses, new centers specializing in business ethics and, in the case of Harvard, student-lead efforts to bring about a professional code of conduct for M.B.A.’s, not unlike oaths that are taken by lawyers and doctors.

Read more . . .

Random Posts:

• Global climate deal only 50:50 chance: Flannery
• SW1 Update – Saturday 3:30 p.m.
• Another Inconvenient Truth: The World’s Growing Population Poses a Malthusian Dilemma
• The Wisdom of the Hive:
• New System Provides Hybrid Electric Autos With Power to Spare

Related posts:

1. Street Smarts: The BioBus Brings a Rolling Science Lab to Resource-Strapped Schools
2. Moving Into a Digital Future, Where Textbooks Are History
3. New Programs Aim to Lure Young Into Digital Jobs
4. Next Up For Disruption? College
5. Green Promise Seen in Switch to LED Lighting

Tags: business leaders, columbia business school, corporate responsibility, corporate social responsibility, graduating class, greed, harvard business school, honor code, Innovation, top business schools

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 30th, 2009 at 10:39 am and is filed under Consider This, Innovation, NY Times, economics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.