Is it a great development in contemporary business for freshly minted MBAs in the hundreds to voluntarily take a personal Ethics Oath prior to entering the workforce? Or is such a thing, like many critics declare, an empty gesture and a waste of time, or even an additional opportunity for cynical manipulation of fragile public confidence?
This week, The Harvard Business School graduated at least eight hundred new Masters of Business Administration. According to the New York Times, that's more than double the number of new medical doctors and lawyers emerging from Harvard this year, all together. At first glance, this may seem like an instance of extreme imbalance. Why do we need so many biz whiz operators, compared to practitioners in medicine and law? But these numbers should really be no surprise, since every law firm and medical office is now clearly a business, and the number of other businesses in the world outside these restricted realms is vastly more than double the number inside them. Every business needs managers. And Harvard provided more than a few this week.
About a month ago, one of the business students looking forward to this year's graduation ceremonies in Cambridge, Maxwell F. Anderson, had an idea. There should be an MBA oath, in some respects analogous to the famous Hippocratic Oath that's so famous in medicine. And it should focus on ethics. Perhaps it could help rehabilitate our current notion of business management and elevate it into more of a true profession, in the classic sense, like law and medicine. With the encouragement of two of his professors, and some fellow students, he began to formulate a pledge, and to promulgate the idea. He's reported he would have been delighted if a hundred of his classmates signed the pledge before graduation. In fact, more than four times that many did.
This act has drawn cheers, jeers, and much ink throughout the world of journalism. Supporters applaud its focus on all the right things. Detractors roll their eyes and say that it either abandons the core mission of business - in their view, doing whatever it takes to make as big a profit as possible - or that, at least, it encourages hypocrisy and empty grandstanding that results in nothing more than unenforceable promises.
This is the short version of the oath. The longer, explicated, version is available here.
The Oath
Preamble: As a manager, my purpose is to serve the greater good by bringing people and resources together to create value that no single individual can build alone. Therefore I will seek a course that enhances the value my enterprise can create for society over the long term. I recognize my decisions can have far-reaching consequences that affect the well-being of individuals inside and outside my enterprise, today and in the future. As I reconcile the interests of different constituencies, I will face difficult choices.
Therefore, I promise:
I will act with utmost integrity and pursue my work in an ethical manner.
I will safeguard the interests of my shareholders, co-workers, customers, and the society in which we operate.
I will manage my enterprise in good faith, guarding against decisions and behavior that advance my own narrow ambitions but harm the enterprise and the societies it serves.
I will understand and uphold, both in letter and in spirit, the laws and contracts governing my own conduct and that of my enterprise.
I will take responsibility for my actions, and I will represent the performance and risks of my enterprise accurately and honestly.
I will develop both myself and other managers under my supervision so that the profession continues to grow and contribute to the well-being of society.
I will strive to create sustainable economic, social, and environmental prosperity worldwide.
I will be accountable to my peers and they will be accountable to me for living by this oath.
This oath I make freely, and upon my honor.
The oath, available on a wallet size card, was actually put onto chairs at one of the graduation events this week.
What is an oath, pledge, or public promise like this? Basically it's an affirmation before witnesses of a commitment, the signaling of a personal intent and resolve. As such, it is clearly an act of speech or a performance of signature that can be either honest or dishonest in its inner intentions. Liars and straight talkers can utter the same words to do very different things. That isn't unique to this case.
I personally applaud Mr. Anderson and the signatories who took this oath out of personal conviction. They are taking a stand and drawing the attention of a much broader public to what matters most in business and in life. Integrity doesn't just make for good press. It makes for deeply satisfying and sustainable success. Ethics isn't just a way of staying out of trouble, or of reducing criminal fines and other sanctions under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. Ethics is way of creating strength. It's a distinctive and unique path to relationships of trust, accomplishments of value, and a legacy of long-lasting meaning.
Ultimately, business ethics is all about:
Responsibility: to the greater good and the big picture of human life.
Transparency: in our decision-making and actions.
Honesty: in what we say, show, and do.
Accountability: with respect to what we've caused or contributed to in our actions.
The core commitments of business ethics aren't complicated in principle. But their application in the real world demands nuance, sophistication, hard thought, wisdom, skill, and consistency.
Congratulations to the Harvard Business School Class of 2009 for bringing all this to our attention in a vivid way, and for generated a new conversation about business ethics when we clearly need one. I'd love to be able to talk to each of those graduating students who signed the pledge, as well as those who didn't, and follow them through the next ten years of their careers, watching what they do and how they do it. Too much modern education focuses on perfecting the means to our ends. We need to focus on the ends as well, analyzing them and assessing them wisely, as recent events clearly demonstrate.
I think that the early crew of leaders at Harvard, like the Puritan divine, Increase Mather, would have applauded this novel development, perhaps added a few clauses of their own, and urged such an oath on us all.
I believe we’re in the early stages of the debate. If this wasn’t important, the discussion wouldn’t be growing. Secondly, what's occurring parallels many stories in my book Without Warning and the launching of a CAP Initiative. I’d encourage the students heading up the MBA oath initiative to pursue these next steps.
1. Listen to the debate taking place around the globe and take notes. This is a valuable feedback loop that shouldn’t be ignored.
2. Revise, clarify and define what you and the Oath truly stand for. Make it dynamic so it can withstand the test of time.
3. Create a sense of urgency around the Oath and its goal.
4. Take it to the next level. Find avenues for academia and the business community to embrace and support it.
5. Encourage other MBA programs from around the globe to sign-on, and become partners. Make a lasting impact by collaborating with the hundreds of MBA institutions and their students.
6. Create a ongoing program to reinforce the values.
7. Make it visible for the world to see on an ongoing basis.
This is a story that could change the world, or just as easily fail. There a many doubting Thomases out there, having seen and experienced similar programs fail. You have a chance to make a difference. It’s in your hands.
Pam and I both came out on the side of The MBA Oath being a positive thing. We'd love feedback from you and the HuffPost readers.
Fair Winds, Peter A. Mello
@petermello @weeklyleader
Peter, this is just the beginning. They have a lot of work to do, and most are expecting them to fail. the heat is on...
Rodney Johnson
www.withoutwarningcoach.com
Rick London
Londons Times Cartoons
www.LondonsTimes.us
Lawyers take an oath to uphold the law, but many don't: Best example are the "torture" memo's.
Physicians take an oath, but fail to uphold them.
Psychologist take an oath, but see what they allowed at military detention centers in AF, Iran and GTMO?
POTUS swear to uphold the Constitution and then subvert it with executive orders and faulty legal opinions (ok, they may not understand the legal opinions that were written as they are not lawyers).
CEO's are supposed to be responsible for their corporations, but plead ignorance (oath not required).
All who fail to uphold their oaths and standards are not punished, so why would we suspect that MBA's would fare any better.
That said as a context, would you consider making, ethics, honor codes, value statements, ..., any public declaration of an intention to be a decent human being and an honorable citizen one of your regular themes.
It is too easy for us all to forget, as the headlines focus on one crook or another, that the vast majority of students, business people, citizens in general, aspire to lead decent lives - and do.
I suspect that some student who have not accepted the invitation to sign an honor code have declined, not out of a rejection of the code or any of its specific promises, but out of a rejection of what could be considered to be implicit in the request to sign it - your not honorable unless you sign.
The media loves highlighting malfeasance - in the executive suite, congress, wherever they find it. Because it generates audiences and sells their advertising slots. Not because social values or public morality is threatened. Because it is good for business.
The media's fixation on the crooks creates a suspicion that executives, and public figures in general, are only out for their own self interest and they are not afraid to bend or break the law and offend public morality in the process. This is not accurate, or even close to accurate for the vast majority - with or without a signed code of honor.
Vladimir Lenin stated it far better than I could, so I will let his words speak for me: "As capitalist economies mature, as capital accumulates, and as profit rates fall, the capitalist economies are compelled to seize colonies and create dependencies to serve as markets, investment outlets, and sources of food and raw materials. In competition with one another, they divide up the colonial world in accordance with their relative strengths.'' Lenin wrote this prophetically in 1917. Just as he went on to say Russia had had its capitalist period and was ready for a socialist revolution, the same thing can be said for the United States. Maybe this oath is the first step. One can only hope.
For example: # 2: "I will safeguard the interests of my shareholders, co-workers, customers, and the society in which we operate." We all learn that in business school, but we ("learn" more or less in code, that stockholders are protected first" albeit much less so today, than yesterday in that the new paradigm reads "community comes first" often equal to bottom line. So if all three shareholders, co-workers and customers are safeguarded, will it be equally?
This entree: "I will be accountable to my peers and they will be accountable to me for living by this oath." insinuates that we can control another person or our peers behaviors. We cannot. We can lead by example, but that does not guarantee (in the least) that a peer is going to follow suite. I think that needs to be spelled out.
Another: "I will strive to create sustainable economic, social, and environmental prosperity worldwide", many firms (as much as they would like to be) cannot be sustainable firms due to the fact that they often MUST co-brand or associate with unsustainable firms such as manufacturers, vendors, . etc. that make it impossible. Many firms prefer "local".
So why not shorten the Oath to "I will always strive to be honest and ethical", wherever I am"?
Sincerely,
Rick London
www.LondonsTimes.us
"I will safeguard the interests of my shareholders, co-workers, customers, and the society in which we operate."
which leaves open the order of importance. Are shareholders to be held more important than society as a whole? It seems to me it could be assumed so, from that -- if it served someone's purposes to assume it.
As we consider all the students who neglected to sign the oath, I just keep thinking to myself "which of these promises would you like to throw out?"
The oath is so incredibly laudable at one end of the spectrum, but the sins of omission of the other students concern me deeply.