Ethics in vogue on campus

Everyone who survived the ’80s remembers John Houseman’s dour, professorial exhortation in TV commercials for Smith Barney. “They make money the old-fashioned way,” he’d say. “They earn it.”
Today, many business school professors are taking a cue from the late actor, lecturing their students on old-fashioned ethics and character. After a decade of scandals on Wall Street and in corporate boardrooms, it seems the subject has become impossible to avoid.
According to the Journal of Business Ethics, the number of management schools that offer stand-alone ethics courses has increased five-fold over the past 10 years, and 25 percent now require students to take those classes. Notre Dame, Case Western Reserve University, De Paul University and Boston College have all established centers to promote business ethics. The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania now offers a doctorate degree.
Even online academies are climbing on the bandwagon: the New England College of Business and Finance offers a master’s degree program in business ethics and compliance.
Institutions in southeastern New England have hardly ignored the trend. Several area schools are pitching their strong focus on values and character as a selling point, including Providence College, Bryant University in Smithfield, and Bentley University in Waltham, Mass. The latter institution is running television ads in which a college vice president talks up the importance of ethics in business education.
“There’s a subtle revolution going on,” said Dan LeClair, vice president and chief knowledge officer at the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International, the accreditation agency for such institutions.
“No matter where you look, you’ll find business schools are making an effort to address ethics and social responsibility,” he said. “We’ve had business scandals forever, but one thing that’s changed is that schools now feel they have to be proactive toward addressing the world’s problems, not reactive. They’ve taken up the idea that business should also be about achieving social good, not simply profitability.”
Over the past few years, the association has been advising colleges to put more focus on ethics, and also providing resources – such as seminars and an online research center – to help them reach that goal.
According to LeClair, the trend reflects changes at many corporations. “At one time most businesses saw sustainability and social responsibility as mostly a public relations effort,” he said. “But over the past decade companies have begun to see these things as real issues, and business schools have begun to think that way as well.”
At Bentley’s Center for Business Ethics, executive director W. Michael Hoffman views the shift in direction with a more jaundiced eye, and draws a direct connection to bad behavior in the boardroom.
“The trend has been gradual over the past 20 or 25 years,” he said. “But certainly the recent scandals – starting with Enron and Tyco, and now the banking crisis and the mortgage-lending crisis – they’ve heightened it. Those events, they’re memorable. That’s why business people in general are viewed with such low regard by the public.”
Hoffman notes that has put the spotlight on schools with strong ethics programs, such as Bentley, where undergraduates can enroll in courses on community service, cyber-ethics, and business and the environment.
“One of our biggest strengths is our emphasis on ethics,” he said. “Our mission is to teach future business leaders that their job is not simply to make the most money, but to be stewards of the economy. The two are inseparable. You’re not a good businessperson unless you can demonstrate character and integrity.”
At Bryant, administrators have sought to make “character” part of their school’s brand identity, but without adding stand-alone undergraduate classes. “We try to infuse ethics into virtually every course our students take,” said Carol DeMoranville, a professor of marketing. “And the focus is more than just part of the curriculum – it’s part of our student organizations and activities and everyday campus life.”
At Bryant, all freshmen must take a “foundations of learning” course that discusses values and integrity along with study habits and other topics. The end-of-the-year awards banquet recognizes not only grades and athletic victories, but character and community service as well. As part of a required management course, all students take on a project that provides business assistance to a local nonprofit.
At Providence College, all undergraduate students, regardless of their major, are required to take an ethics course. Sue Lehrman, dean of the school of business, notes that PC is run by a Roman Catholic religious order, the Dominican friars, and the curriculum reflects that. “Ethics and social responsibility are a critical part of our mission and always have been,” she said.
Nonetheless, the school has stepped up its efforts over the past year. A required ethics course has been added to the MBA program, and lessons on ethics have been added to every undergraduate business course. “We’re using as many real-life experiences as possible,” Lehrman said. “We’re bringing business leaders to campus to discuss the ethical dilemmas they’ve faced, and how they solved them.”
Those business students now sitting through lectures on morality and character can take comfort in knowing that the courses will most certainly enhance their resumes. According to Hoffman, businesses are now looking for junior execs who understand both doing well and doing good.
“Corporations realize there’s a great risk involved if they don’t stress the importance of ethics,” he says. “They could face loss [of reputation], legal action against the company or individuals, even a drop in stock price, or loss of the company, as was the case with Arthur Anderson. To be a good business leader, you do have to be effective and efficient, but you also have to be ethical.” &#8226