Are you willing to take the pledge?
After an unprecedented two-year parade of corporate fraudsters, some educators say the answer may be a Hippocratic-type oath for MBA students. "I will engage in honest and transparent transactions. I will respect the rights and dignity of individuals…,” students would recite, as did graduates of Madrid’s Instituto de Empresa business school last month.
“Business management doesn’t have clear guidelines on what is acceptable behavior,” says IE’s dean Angel Cabrera, who’s campaigning for business schools to adopt an ethics code. By drawing on the spirit of the doctors’ oath, Cabrera hopes to instill moral direction in future business leaders. He’s promoting the pledge and discussed it in January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Under the covenant, students would swear not only to create shareholder value, but to use natural resources in a sustainable way and contribute to the wealth and progress of society. Critics, however, wonder what the point is of a pledge that lacks teeth. And aren’t such lofty ideals at odds with the goal of making money?
Douglas Bachelis, a Pace second-year, says, “Anything that could restore credibility would be a good thing. But the success of a pledge depends on the extent to which it’s adopted.”
C. Warren Neel, director of the University of Tennessee Corporate Governance Center, is also on the fence. “It certainly can do no harm,” he says. “But there’s absolutely no assurance that it will make a dime’s worth of difference.”
Edward Snyder, dean of the University of Chicago’s graduate B-school, is even harsher. “It’s a dangerous idea,” he scoffs. “It confuses young business people about their roles. It’s saying, ‘I’m going to be a good person.’ A business leader competes. That doesn’t help everybody.”
