Don’t Blame the Business Schools
Steve Kerr
While some point fingers at business schools for the flawed financial structures that led some to behave very badly, as HOW Online contributor Steve Kerr says on Harvard Business Online, “The notion that management education has such a massive influence upon its students that it can be blamed for today’s … economic crisis is absurd.”
Do we equally hold responsible “law schools from whom graduate a seemingly endless parade of tax-evading, rule-breaking politicians?” he asks.
The number of MBAs who participated in the subprime-lending disaster represents a small percentage of the total number of people with MBAs, and the managers at the center of the scandals knew what they were doing was wrong — that’s why they used such sophisticated deceptions to hide their tracks, he says.
While we should expect business schools to make efforts to integrate ethics, environmental sustainability and social responsibility into their curricula, it’s really the corporate management-education programs that can have a bigger impact on what happens after graduation. Such programs present potential leaders with real-world situations where difficult choices must be made between landing profitable deals and doing what is honest and ethical. The difference in the approaches is clear, says Kerr:
When a university professor says, “Do the right thing now and you will be better off in the future for having done it,” students may roll their eyes at the seeming naïveté of the comment. When the CEOs of GE and Goldman Sachs make the same point to their employees, it’s a different story.
Last 5 posts by HOW Online
• What Color is the Triple Bottom Line? - July 29th, 2010
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• New Zealand Review: Poor Governance - July 29th, 2010
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• Becoming the Good Company - July 28th, 2010
