A634.1.6.RB_HallMike

I’m positive that if you asked people to name the least most trusted people on the planet, business executives would be in the top 5 responses.  Ethics and business just aren’t two words that people generally put together, and there is a reason for that.  Much of the economic hardship over the past several years was the result of business leaders looking to make some money by cutting corners and skirting by ethical considerations.  In addition to the economic woes the country has experienced, several other executives have made the headlines due to downright unethical decision making (see Bernie Madoff, CFOs at Seimens, Robert Rubin to name a few) (Kostigen, 2009).  In all reality though, I have a hard time really faulting these guys for doing what they do – in the end it is just a by-product or the nature of the beast when you deal with a free market, rather unregulated capitalist economy.  Your goal as a business man is to make money for the business and make a few dollars yourself in the process.  Understanding that I think that people are inherently evil and generally selfish, it is hard to fault someone for taking advantage of a situation when they think that no one is looking.  It is like trying to blame a 4 year old for trying to sneak a cookie out of the cookie jar.

With that being said, you absolutely can fault them because what they did was wrong and they knew it when they did so.  Many people point to the fact that business schools are at the root of this problem (executives doing what makes sense monetarily while removing all other considerations from the equation) because they focus on performance at all costs vice doing so under constraints.  What is strange in my opinion is that a more stressful environment – the battlefield – has a much deeper ethical understanding and application from leaders in general compared to the business world.  If leaders can maintain ethical standards on a battlefield then business leaders should be able to do the same in the meeting rooms.  The difference between the two cultures though is that military leaders receive extensive ethical training and are constantly reminded of what is right and wrong whereas business leaders might get taught some in business school but are then left to fend for themselves in the complex business world.

So what can these schools do in order to improve on the ethical decision making track record of their graduates.  Joel Podolny of the Harvard Business Review has some ideas that include stopping the ranking system of schools (and thus stopping the cutthroat mentality), increase the amount of qualitative research (diversifying education and limiting the focus on just hard numbers), and diversifying the education (have more ethics discussions) (Podolny, 2009).  Doing these things hopefully will show future business leaders that the bottom line is not always the bottom line; that numbers can be misleading, especially if they were achieved unethically.  As luck would have it, there are business schools out there that have taken notice of the unethical practices that have started to implement some of Podolny’s ideas.  Schools like Michigan State, the Universities of Colorado and Pittsburg, and Katz Graduate School of business have all started requiring ethical discussions in class (Korn, 2013).  While it will require some time to see if their efforts work since the graduates will have to work their way up the ladder, having at least a few ethical business leaders out there certainly will not hurt!

 

Kostigen, T. (2009, Jan 15). The 10 most unethical people in business. Retrieved from http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-10-most-unethical-people-in-business

Podolny, J. (2009). The buck stops (and starts) at business school. Harvard Business Review, 87(6), 62-67. Retrieved from http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.libproxy.db.erau.edu/ehost/detail?sid=ae0a377b-bb55-41cf-bf1e-8cdd0619f018@sessionmgr110&vid=1&hid=108&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ==

Korn, M. (2013, Feb 6). Does an "a" in ethics have any value?. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324761004578286102004694378.html