At M.B.A. Programs, Teaching Ethics Poses Its Own Dilemma
A modern morality play opened recently on Broadway -- not in the theater district, but way uptown at Columbia University. Before an audience of Columbia M.B.A. students, actors performed "Scenes from the Slippery Slope," in which an investment banker is pressured to falsify expense accounts to conceal his boss's extramarital affair. At pivotal points in the minidrama, actors called on students to advise the ethically challenged young man.
The presentation was part of Columbia's latest effort to infuse ethics into the M.B.A. program in an engaging way, a process that is proving to be a slippery slope itself for business schools. Three years after coming under attack for their M.B.A. graduates' involvement in corporate scandals, schools still are grappling with how to teach ethics more effectively.
"Ethics isn't getting a whole lot more substantive attention at many schools," says Craig Smith , associate dean at London Business School, which requires both full-time and executive M.B.A. students to study ethics. "It's often just an elective offering at best, arguably preaching to the converted."
Even as corporate executives are being held to ever-higher standards of conduct, M.B.A. students and professors bristle at ethics requirements. Some faculty members resent being forced to squeeze ethics lessons into an already jam-packed syllabus, while students grumble that ethics classes tend to be preachy and philosophical. At Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, some students even object to a required ethics course because they contend it doesn't matter to corporate recruiters and won't help them land jobs.
Two years ago when I first wrote about how business schools were jumping on the ethics bandwagon, some of the programs were just taking shape. In light of the resurgence of ethics and accounting scandals at Boeing Co., American International Group Inc. and other companies, I decided to revisit a couple of schools and check on their progress.
Columbia undoubtedly concocted one of the most ambitious ethics courses ever. It also proved to be one of the thorniest. What went wrong? Clearly, the course's novel but rather convoluted structure proved to be a major flaw. Columbia devised a separate course in which students took a final exam and received a grade, but many of the class sessions were taught within other required "core" courses, such as finance, operations and economics.
"When a professor said it was time for the ethics module, it felt very forced and students didn't participate very much," says Matt Wang, a second-year Columbia M.B.A. "A lot of students were also upset about being graded on a curve. If you received a low grade, you felt you would be viewed as a bad person." (Aware of such concerns, Columbia ended up switching to a pass/fail grading system last year.)
This year's revamped program, The Individual, Business and Society: Tradeoffs, Choices and Accountability, no longer is a separate course with its own final and grade. It still requires professors in the basic courses to weave in ethics content, such as fair-pricing policies in marketing and the boundaries of "earnings management" in accounting. "We still believe in putting ethics in the context of our core courses," says Paul Glasserman, senior vice dean of the Columbia Business School. "When I teach managerial statistics, for example, I deal with the misleading ways information can be represented." The revised ethics program also features many activities outside the classroom, such as the morality play, guest lecturers and panel discussions.
Olivia Ralston, editor in chief of the business school's Bottom Line newspaper, finds that ethics lessons still "feel too compartmentalized" and that "some professors present ethics as something the administration is requiring rather than something we should take seriously the entire semester and in our careers." She gives Columbia's special events mixed reviews: a panel on the Sarbanes-Oxley law "bored" her, but a discussion of a case involving racism in the workplace proved "provocative."
To be sure, Columbia deserves credit for persevering to integrate ethics throughout the M.B.A. program. And it appears to be on the right track with its broader approach of blending ethics with social responsibility and corporate governance. "The problem with ethics is that it's such a loaded word," Dr. Glasserman says. "What we want to give students are strategies for protecting their integrity in the workplace. We aren't trying to teach them right from wrong."
Harvard Business School's new required course, Leadership and Corporate Accountability, also places ethics within a larger framework and appears to be off to a good start. Using the Boston school's trademark case-study format, the course includes sections on personal values and leadership, governance issues and the legal, ethical and economic responsibilities of companies to their stakeholders. "The course works well," says Harvard M.B.A. student Julian Flannery, "because instead of a lot of philosophical musings, it focuses on how to apply ethics lessons in the real world." Among the cases: Enron's collapse, WorldCom's recovery strategy, the Tylenol poisonings and Royal/Dutch Shell's troubles in Nigeria.
Lynn Paine, the lead professor for the class, believes a stand-alone course is essential because "ethics discussion too easily gets crowded out" of other management courses. "The integration model sounds good, but many faculty members have no training in ethics and the law and don't know how to incorporate them well," she says. "The odd thing about ethics is that people assume anyone can teach it because everyone faces ethical issues in life. But just because you shop, that doesn't mean you can teach marketing." MBA 道德教育陷入两难境地
一部现代道德剧近期在百老汇上演，但此次演出的地点不是在剧院区，而是在哥伦比亚大学校园内。面对哥伦比亚大学的 MBA 学生观众，演员们演出的剧目是“岌岌可危” (Scenes from the Slippery Slope) ，该剧讲述了一位投资银行家为了掩盖老板的婚外恋，被迫伪造费用帐目的故事。这部道德剧的关键之处在于，演员会让学生们给剧中这位面临伦理道德挑战的年轻人提供建议。
哥伦比亚大学目前正试图采取一些引人入胜的形式在 MBA 教育中加入伦理道德的内容。然而，实际上各家商学院此类努力本身的处境就可谓是岌岌可危。三年前，由于不断有 MBA 毕业生卷入到公司丑闻中，备受指责的商学院开始在 MBA 课程中加入道德教育的内容，但直到现在它们还是没有找到进行伦理道德教育的更有效方式。
伦敦商学院 (London Business School) 副院长史密斯 (Craig Smith) 表示，许多商学院对道德教育的重视程度并没有得到提高，很多情况下它最多只是作为学生的选修课之一，很难发挥作用。伦敦商学院要求所有全职 MBA 和高管 MBA 必须学习道德课程。
虽然目前公司高管被要求遵守更高的行为标准， MBA 学生和教授依然不愿意开设道德课程，一些教师对在本来就已排满的课程表中再塞入道德课程的做法心生怨恨，而学生们则抱怨这类道德课程说教味太浓、理论性太强。在卡耐基－梅隆大学 (Carnegie Mellon University) ，一些学生甚至拒绝上道德必修课，因为他们认为这类课程对他们今后找工作起不到任何作用，用人公司不会对此感兴趣。
两年前，当我第一次就商学院掀起道德课程的热潮发表文章的时候，一些课程才刚刚成形。在波音公司 (Boeing Co.) 、美国国际集团 (American International Group Inc.) 和其他公司先后爆出道德和会计丑闻后，我决定再次拜访一些商学院，看看他们道德课程的进展情况。
毫无疑问，哥伦比亚大学酝酿的是有史以来最雄心勃勃的道德课程之一，而事实证明它也是问题最多的课程之一。问题出在哪里？显然，这门课程新颖、但却错综复杂的结构是主要问题所在。哥伦比亚大学设计了一门单独的道德课程，学生期末还要进行考试和评分，但在许多情况下，道德课程的内容被融入到金融、运营和经济学等必修课中
哥伦比亚大学 2 年级的 MBA 学生 Matt Wang 说，当教授开始讲授道德教育内容的时候，学生们感觉自己是被迫听讲，积极参与的热情并不高。“许多学生对这门课的成绩也十分紧张，因为如果分数低，你会觉得别人把你看成一个坏人。”（在了解到学生们的此类担忧后，哥伦比亚大学去年决定这门课程以通过／不通过来记分。）
今年修改后的道德课程不再是一门需要进行期末考试和评分的独立课程，但教授仍需要在一些必修课中加入道德教育的内容，比如在营销课上讲合理定价策略、在会计课上讲“盈利管理”的界限等。哥伦比亚商学院高级副院长格拉瑟曼 (Paul Glasserman) 称：“我们仍认为应该在核心课程中融入道德教育的内容，比如当我教授管理统计学时，我会讲讲公司是如何提供误导信息的。”调整后的道德课程还增加了一些课堂以外的活动，比如道德剧、请校外人士开讲座和小组讨论。
该商学院出版的报纸 Bottom Line 的主任编辑罗尔斯顿 (Olivia Ralston) 发现，道德课程内容仍然过于割裂，并且一些教授将伦理道德描述成政府要求做到的事情，而不是我们应该在学习过程中、在整个职业生涯中都应该严肃对待的东西。她对哥伦比亚大学特意为道德教育开展的各种活动有不同的评价：其中一个有关萨班斯－奥克斯利法案 (Sarbanes-Oxley) 的小组讨论就十分乏味，而另一场有关涉及公司种族歧视的案例讨论就很能激发大家的兴趣。
哥伦比亚大学在整个 MBA 项目中坚持融入道德教育，这一点无疑是值得赞赏的，它以各种方式将伦理道德与社会责任感、公司治理结合在一起，看来也是正确的。格拉瑟曼表示，“问题是道德这个词承载了太多的东西，我们想要传授给学生的是如何在职场洁身自好，而不是要教他们如何辨明是非。”
哈佛商学院 (Harvard Business School) 在新开设的一门必修课：领导者与公司责任 (Leadership and Corporate Accountability) 中也加入了道德的内容，这看起来是个好的开始。这门课程采用了哈佛商学院著名的案例分析方式，其中包括个人价值、领导风格、治理问题和公司对股东的法律责任、伦理责任和经济责任等内容。哈佛 MBA 学生弗兰纳里 (Julian Flannery) 称，这门课很不错，因为它没有过多地偏重理论，它的重点是如何将道德课程与现实社会联系在一起。这门课程使用的案例包括：安然 (Enron) 的轰然倒塌、 WorldCom 的振兴之路、 Tylenol 的药品中毒事件以及皇家壳牌石油公司 (Royal Dutch/Shell) 在尼日利亚遇到的问题等。
这门课程的主讲教授佩因 (Lynn Paine) 认为，单独设立一门道德教育课是必不可少的，因为道德问题讨论很容易被其他管理课程排挤掉。她表示，那种结合教学的办法听起来不错，但许多教员并没有接受过道德教育和法律知识的培训，不知道如何将它们很好地融合在一起。她说，有一点很奇怪，人们似乎认为每个人都能够教授道德课程，因为每个人一生中都会面临道德问题。可是，不能仅仅因为你会购物，就意味著你能够教授市场营销课。
