Harvard Business School Offers New Course in Ethics
'Leadership and Corporate Accountability' now part of required curriculum
BOSTON -- Expanding upon a nearly century-long tradition of integrating ethics into its curriculum, Harvard Business School (HBS) has introduced a unique interdisciplinary course that draws on economics, law, psychology, and organizational behavior to help prepare students for the challenges of leadership in a changing global society. Ten HBS faculty members, representing all subject areas of the School, taught the semester-long course, Leadership and Corporate Accountability (LCA), to some nine hundred first-year students this spring as part of the Required Curriculum of the School's MBA Program.
Dean Kim B. Clark called the course "an important milestone" for the School. "In keeping with our mission to educate leaders who make a difference in the world," Clark said, "the faculty continuously seeks new ways to teach about ethical dilemmas that defy simple solutions. Given the importance of business in today's world, we feel strongly that business schools must prepare students to make good on the responsibilities they assume by becoming management professionals," he continued. "Few people entering MBA programs have a solid understanding of these responsibilities, let alone a framework for making decisions when multiple responsibilities are in play. Fewer still have grappled with the challenges of building responsible organizations. This course fulfills that need."
Harvard Business School's faculty has long focused on the School's role in the ethical development of its students. In the book Can Ethics Be Taught? (Harvard Business School Press, 1993), Professor Thomas R. Piper noted that some skeptics argue that it is "too late" for young men and women in their twenties or thirties to wrestle with value conflicts in business school.
"We reject this assertion emphatically," he wrote. "These students are at a critical stage in the development of their perceptions about capitalism, business practice, leadership, and the appropriate resolution of ethical dilemmas in business. This is a period for inquiry and reflection;" he noted. "Extended time is necessary to develop sufficient strength and sophistication to acknowledge the presence of ethical dilemmas, to imagine what could be, to recognize explicitly avoidable and unavoidable harms. It takes time to develop tough-minded individuals with the courage to act."
HBS faculty began conceptualizing aspects of the Leadership and Accountability course in the late 1990s -- well before the recent spate of corporate scandals -- in response to ethical issues managers were facing as a result of globalization, privatization, and new technologies, said Lynn Sharp Paine, the John G. McLean Professor of Business Administration at HBS and co-head of the course's faculty design team. At the same time, a faculty working group charged with examining the role of law in the MBA curriculum recommended strengthening the School's teaching of legal issues in business.
Although we had been teaching a required ethics module in the first-year curriculum since 1988, we realized that greater depth was required to prepare students for the complex choices they will face," Paine explained. "The goal of Leadership and Corporate Accountability is not to propose a right set of answers, but to give students a framework for working through the issues."
According to members of the course's design team, "LCA stems from a belief that business leaders play a crucial role in society. They and the companies they build and lead are expected to deliver strong financial results for investors, superior goods and services for customers, attractive work environments for employees, and innovative ideas for the future. At the same time, they are expected to observe the laws of the countries in which they operate, respect society's ethical standards, and contribute to the communities of which they are part."
To reflect these multifaceted responsibilities, LCA is organized into three parts: the legal, ethical, and economic responsibilities of corporate leadership; the elements of organizational accountability; and the interface between personal values and responsible leadership. The first part of the course concerns managerial choices or dilemmas in dealing with a company's core constituencies: investors, customers, suppliers, employees, and the public. The second focuses on issues of organizational design and governance, such as choices about incentives, planning systems, and performance measures. The third part is about personal choices or dilemmas, including those that arise when an individual's values collide with those of a boss or the company where he or she is employed.
Taught by the case method, which enables students to grapple with the kinds of real decisions and dilemmas managers confront every day, the course presents a broad selection of materials, including case studies that range from the rise and fall of Enron and the Bridgestone Corporation's massive tire recall in 2000 to the efforts of Malden Mills' founder Aaron Feuerstein to both care for his employees and rebuild his company in the wake of a devastating fire. Students also examine the corporate credo of Johnson & Johnson and its influence in the corporation's widely praised handling of a series of Tylenol poisonings in the 1980s, discuss Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," and wrestle with the role of business in addressing societal problems such as racism and the global AIDS pandemic. Although much of LCA is new, it also draws upon decades' worth of work by faculty not only at Harvard Business School and Harvard University but at other institutions as well.
Students have praised the effect of the course on their educational experience at the School. In a message to his instructor, William W. George (MBA '66), former Chairman and CEO of Medtronic, Inc., and now a senior lecturer at the School, Ruben Kliksberg (HBS '05) wrote, "After these months with you in LCA, I strongly believe human beings are morally 'moldable' at any age. All we need is the right teacher and some inspiration. While I have always been clear that I want to be an ethical leader, this course has given me insight, tools, and encouragement to become such a leader."
Founded in 1908 as part of Harvard University, Harvard Business School (www.hbs.edu) is located in Boston, Mass., and offers full-time programs leading to the MBA and doctoral degrees, as well as more than 40 executive development programs. With a faculty of more than 200 distinguished scholars, the School is dedicated to educating leaders who make a difference in the world. Its core focus is to shape the practice of business, build enduring knowledge, and effectively communicate important ideas.