Students in business school have always taken ethics classes,
but today's university programs are taking ethics learning to a
higher level, teaching more courses on the subject and even
integrating ethics instruction into other classes (think finance
ethics, management ethics, employment ethics and so on). According
to Alfred Gini, a philosophy professor at Loyola University in
Chicago and associate editor of Business Ethics Quarterly,
"Because of Enron, all MBA programs, all schools of business,
are looking at themselves and saying, 'What happened here, and
why did it happen?'"
At the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University in New
York City, which is also home to the Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.
Center for Leadership and Ethics, students learn how to develop
alternative strategies when faced with ethical dilemmas. Other
schools focus on giving students a barometer for how to approach
ethical decisions. Ethics classes at Loyola Marymount
University's MBA program in Los Angeles, for instance, focus
heavily on self-awareness in decision-making.
"I feel like most people truly want to do the right
thing," says LMU professor Rabbi Arthur Gross-Schaefer.
"However, there are many barriers, including not having tools
they can effectively and quickly use when they're in uncharted
waters." He teaches his students to develop personal mission
statements, core values and decision models--a sort of toolbox for
ethical decision making they can take with them when they
graduate.
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Real-world application of classroom lessons is a primary focus
of many programs, which often invite guest speakers in to discuss
how ethical decisions have affected their businesses. Joe
Mechlinski, a 1999 economics graduate of Johns Hopkins University
in Baltimore, is one example: He's used his college ethics
training in more than one business situation--and spoken about it
to college students, too.
In 2000, Mechlinski co-founded EntreQuest, a sales training and
development company in Baltimore, with Jason Pappas, 38. When their
first and only client, a company that helps kids get into college,
attempted to breach their contract and leave EntreQuest,
Mechlinski, 28, and his partner took stock. They could sue,
dragging both companies through the muck and eventually destroying
the other company, or come up with another solution. Mechlinski and
Pappas didn't want to put the company out of business, so,
remembering his ethics training, Mechlinski stepped out of the
situation, looked at it from all sides and decided to meet with the
company one more time. After about two hours, he says, "We
walked away with a different agreement--which made [our] company
significantly more money." The solution made good business
sense and moral sense, and Mechlinski and Pappas have since built
EntreQuest to 2005 projected sales of approximately $1.2
million.
Ethics instruction today is less about "do this, don't
do that" and more about developing strategies for dealing with
problems. Says John W. Dienhart, director of the Albers Business
Ethics Initiative at Seattle University, "Once we get the
groundwork settled--that I'm not going to tell [students] what
the right thing is, but that we're going to talk about the
difficult problems we face in business, and we're going to try
to deal with those as best we can--[the students] are all over it;
they love it."