GLOBAL: Business schools focus on ethics

Universities and business schools are developing MBA programmes that provide greater scope for studies in ethical business practices following the spate of scandals that helped fuel the recession.

Universities and business schools are developing MBA programmes that provide greater scope for studies in ethical business practices, following the spate of scandals that helped fuel this recession.

The Instituto de Empresa (IE), based in Madrid in Spain, was recently ranked at the top of the Wall Street Journal's list for MBA programmes under two years of length. The school has become a role model for other schools due to its implementation of business ethics courses into its curricula.

"This whole [economic] crisis has made us think to what extent are business schools in general responsible for some of the excesses of the last year? Are we really preparing our students to be ethical?" said Gonzalo Garland, Director of External Relations at IE in an interview with University World News. "We want to contribute to society more responsible managers."

Garland noted that by instilling a strong ethical foundation for students, future CEOs and management would be driven by something more than greed. "We want people to be open to other cultures, open to other ways of thinking, open to change."

Other universities, such as the Melbourne Business School in Australia, have stressed the integration of other disciplines for their students' MBA studies. To help them think more creatively and ethically about their business studies, the MBS has enlisted a philosopher-in-residence.

In an explanation, the university says: "Greed is ambition uneducated and the principal task of business schools is to ensure that ambition is educated."

Other experts have suggested that MBA students have developed a more ethical perspective by merely being exposed to the news during this recession.

"Students' engagement with, and interest in, the [MBA] course has been very good, largely, they suggest, because of the insight economics can give into the news they hear every day," said Frances Smith, a senior lecturer in economics and strategy at Oxford Brookes University Business School in the UK.