This section outlines the ethics and moralvalues one can achieve after or while getting a MBA degree from a business school or at work
Often one of the biggest barriers to doing the right thing lies in not knowing what
to do or say in a hierarchical or group context. Think first of hierarchies. Pretty
much all organizations are hierarchical in nature, with each individual answerable
to, and performing tasks assigned by, someone in the layer above. In such contexts,
when your performance evaluations (and maybe your very job) relies on your boss’s
perceptions of you, it can be pretty tough to speak truth to power, as the saying
goes, even when your conscience says you should. Next think of groups. Business
involves a lot of teamwork a lot of MBA education revolves around that fact and
on teams there can be pressure to conform, to go with the flow, to be a ‘team player.’
But more often than not, if something unethical is about to be done, and least one
person on the team realizes that it’s wrong. The question in such cases is whether
that one person will have what it takes to speak up. Part of MBA ethics education
should be aimed at giving people what it takes to do so.
At a first approximation, speaking up when you see something unethical (or maybe
just something thoughtless, with potentially bad consequences) requires three things.
First, you need the understanding the ethical sensitivity, if you will to notice
that something is wrong. Second, you need to be motivated, you need to care, and
you need the courage to act in the face of the pressures of hierarchy and teamwork.
You need some understanding of just what your obligations really are. (Among other
things, this requires a refusal to indulge in self-serving excuses.)
Third, you need the skills to actually formulate and voice an objection. You need
to know things like how to express ethical doubts in a non-threatening way. You
need to know how to seek out allies who might share your ethical qualms. And you
need a vocabulary in which to express your concerns.
None of this is intended to exaggerate the complexity of the simple act of raising
one’s voice. But all the available evidence suggests that at least sometimes (and
likely too often) it actually is difficult, in organizational settings, to speak
up when we get the sense that something isn’t right. And (as discussed in a previous
blog entry) it’s just not plausible to think that the people who fail to speak up
are all somehow morally defective. Too often, bad things happen because good people
don’t speak up. We need to make sure that MBA students (and, surely, others too)
graduate with the skills to do so.
Note: These figures are estimates and not exact ones. They are based on the dynamic nature of MBA education. We do not guarantee that the numbers given here are the exact numbers for all the B-Schools.