Onus of Ethical Lapses Lies on Business Schools

C iodin clockpt Paper Seminars in HRM Final visualize Bushra Fatima, MBA 2k8 13 May, 2010 th Bushra Fatima, NUST barter School, 2010 2 sober Lapses in c on the wholeinges cargo lies on B Schools? I joined NUST backup School devil years back, after I did my engineering horizontal surface. The logical premise, I gave to unblock my choice to enter a Business inform was non that I was passionate nearly studying melodic phrase concern administration in any fashion, nevertheless was the f execute that the MBA is a good add-on to my degree, ensuring give away and well compenscapable c atomic number 18er options in the long run.In my view back then, a business concern school was meant to churn reveal double-deckers, like so many a(prenominal) medical and engineering schools that churn out doctors and engineers. By the end of my number angiotensin converting enzyme semester of MBA, my perception was interchanged. Getting an MBA doesnt extend to you a manager. Manag ement is more(prenominal) than of a practice, whateverthing that necessarily to be do remote the safe purlieu of Business school. concord to one of my professors Its like swimming you batch non call for it by sitting cozy in an air-conditioned layerroom listening to the lecture.However, like near occupations you affect to understand the theory female genital organ the practice. Hence, the case with teaching honourable motive in business schools and the responsibility of the represent to instill respectable economic apprize in the educatees is challenged. Business population act in wrong ways when they start evaluating the risk and reinforcing stimuluss of being a moral person. Business school should teach that economic analysis is further dishful and proper when all of the options being considered atomic number 18 morally correct.Aristotle cerebrated morals was more than just learning a set of rules. Ethics was a way of living. One move arounds a lut e player by acting the lute, one becomes a builder by building likewise, one becomes chivalric by doing courageous acts (a virtue for Aristotle) Before I h one-time(a) the business schools responsible for the ethical lapses that happen in the business world, let us delve into any(prenominal) reality check. Can morality be taught? Studies award that MBA alters how schoolchilds view businesses and their roles and responsibilities as managers.Students bring in their morality and moral values which whitethorn be hard to transform all to bondher nevertheless a slight change in attitudes may be inf mapd in them during the fertilise of study. However, point if the student learns complete theory associated with ethics, on that point is no guarantee that what he does outside the class would be in accordance with what he has learnt in class. Unless, the class learning is checked by a value structure of the students environment on campus and at home, a essence of double standar ds is sent.That brings me to what the student really learns in the business school and what is fiercenesse upon during his tenure there. When a student is taught astir(predicate) leadership for example, the vehemence is on business leaders gain in lines of wealth and building multibillion dollar enterprises rather than what they grant contri entirelyed to the confederation or what change they gestate make for the bet full shapeent of pieceity. The business schools scarper to give a myopic view of protrude tor and leadership to the students equation victory with monetary gain thus monetization of the concept of leadership.A profitable enterprise according to the business schools atomic number 18 ones which becomes towards increase short term monetary gains for the sh arh honest-to-goodness instead of emphasizing on sustainable growth and gaining all s recurrenceholders in long term. Thus, indoctrination of money mindedness in done to the extent of poisoning the y oung mind to call in ethics as old school philosophy which stands in the way of success. boilers suit business schools convey a subtle that lethal message of privilege. Bushra Fatima, NUST Business School, 2010 3The business school teaching methodology that puts overly some(prenominal) emphasis on case study administration gives a false confidence to the student that he knows how to solve real heart problems. He is encouraged to draw and quarter use of the economic models without taking into report card the variety of problems and issues that may arise as a result of those decisions. The activeness of the experience is taken as a kernel to a decided end without enabling him to do critical analysis. He is taught how to solve problems but he is not taught think about the side effects of his decisions.The cases mettlesomelighting success stories and emphasize on numerical and financial aspects without reduceing much on the nitty gritty clemente details. Another pro blem is that each place of business is taught more or less in isolation. The marketing people emphasize on marketing aspects, the finance people emphasize on the financials and the gentle imagination people see things through their own one-sided glass thus isolating the student from the intricate details of implications resulting from their skewed decisions.The ethics aspect in most case discussions is never emphasized and students ar seldom told what not to do. It is eventful for the students to come up with quick-witted solutions and strategies and they should be able to state their financial viability but nobody questions the ethical viability. For many students ethics equals to norms. Norms they say is how things atomic number 18 done usually which can mean that people can justify their actions just because it is largely acceptable. This leads us to the bandwagon and group think mentality which exists among students. As a society we office staff collectively.So if it i s socially acceptable to bribe, people atomic number 18 expiration to do it without questioning morality of the action. Business schools, or for that matter any school of learning is responsible to bring a change in the apparent movement of blind followership and enable critical opinion thus, contributing to evolution of societies. We full of life in an ethically dysfunctional society. We dont teach our children to be responsible citizens instead we emphasize on competing and being the best. We teach children that its a jungle out there where survival is that of the fittest.When it comes to reservation a biography choice, we impose that career is one which gives a better lapse on the money invested on education thus, forcing them to take up careers not out of passion but out of economic need. This vicious roll which starts at home makes young minds believe that being successful is equivalent to how much money soulfulness makes. The educational system in addition reitera tes the similar fact, when children are divided into art and science group, on the derriere of the grades they get. cleverness and intelligence is quantified by how much marks a kid gets.If somebody is in a profession such as teaching it is undervalued, because it pays less, and is a lot the perception that somebody who is a failure otherwise, ends up teaching. Little emphasis is placed on how one can receipts the society by adopting a certain profession same is the case with people going to business schools. Business school students are there to benefit themselves. by means of their induction systems business schools hunt for the overtly pushful, people who are competitive and who seek to reach the vizor at all costs.People who once out of the nasty and fierce system seek quick success and try to win billet of importance in top of the cables length firms. While business schools switch excelled at producing graduates that demonstrate competence in engineering investment products base on complex mathematical models and implementing students exceptional ability at marketing and optimizing productivity, little has been done to enlighten the Bushra Fatima, NUST Business School, 2010 4 student as to how to use his/her acquired intellectual virtues in a manner which promotes morality.Although students leave the university environment excelling with intellectual alternatives, there is no look for being made to demonstrate how these attributes can be used to practice excellence of character. Business schools tend to minimize their responsibility to indoctrinate students with a sense of moral obligation or a proclivity towards the out of bounds of moral excellence. I am not saying that being ambitious is wrong. Somebody who is taking up MBA is supposed to be ambitious but that ambition running into raw greed is dangerous.The lust for success and cut selfish gain is when a person is forced to resort to unethical behavior. The economic models taught a t most business schools take away the charitableistic element and talk about bottom line and how important is it to deliver the goods that. It infuses a dog-eat-dog attitude among students. Altruism and social responsibility is ridiculed and called soft aspects and are often ignored. The responsibility of business schools starts from the induction swear out of candidates.They need to survey that people they are lining up to take up positions of mightiness are ethically sound people and are bent on doing good for all the stakeholders instead of just qualification money and fame for themselves. Ethical values should be made eccentric of the selection criteria and should retain more weightage than brilliant academic credentials and qualifications. This is under the premise that you cannot transform ethical values of a person by teaching him ethics in classroom. So this is a better way to take out the horrid eggs in the first place.The selection committee should see that the st udent is willing to conk out for the betterment of the society and this should reflect on his profile as part of his credentials. Also the candidates reference checks should be made and the information given on his profile should be sustain in order to make a correct character assessment. However, even if the corrective system is in place it doesnt ensure one hundred percent that ethical lapses wont happen. As long as there is bigger personal stake involved, unethical practices will take place.One would always question what is in it for them to act ethical, when the bigger gain and recognition goes to someone who cut corners and got away with it. The importance of teaching ethics cannot be ignored as it makes us question every actions ethical validity. However, the responsibility of business schools is not just to lecture ethics in the classroom but to infuse ethics at all levels and balancing the values taught with values practiced. The prevalent belief of innocent until prove n guilty gives a chance to students to play around with the system and to get away with questionable behavior.Cheating for that matter is a permissible action until you are caught. The competition is so tough that students tend to use all means whether fair or unfair to get good grades. For them, ethical are all those actions for which they dont end up punished. The business schools like any other professional institution should have a Hippocratic professional code of conduct and anybody found to be going against it should be made to pay by dismissal from the profession altogether. In Pakistan where corruption has become a norm an element of change is needed and business schools can play their role in this regard. tiptop notch business schools should have the power to scrap the degree of those graduates who get involved in unethical behavior such as our ex-prime diplomatic minister who was an IBA graduate and was alleged of being involved in money laundering. Bushra Fatima, NUST B usiness School, 2010 5 The platform in the business schools should not teach ethics as an isolated course, focusing on philosophy, which end up making the young minds more confused. Rather, ethics should be directed to instruct students to make ethically sound decisions establish on rational thought meter the implications in the real world.Students should be aware of the examples of those who did not comply with ethics and ended up losing everything including their reputation so that they know the dire consequences and think twice before engaging in questionable behavior. The scheme class for example should teach the students not just to build a strategical direction of the caller in order to maximize short term profits but in like manner to make choices which go hand in hand with companys values that can guide their overall elaboration on the basis of which sustainable growth of an enterprise is achieved.The curriculum in business schools should be such that it encourages o ut of the box thinking instead of limiting and confining the thought to achieving profits that are investor and company centric. Courses should enable looking at the bigger picture, looking at not short term gains but long term implications on economic, human and environmental development. The purpose of business studies should not be just to grow students to excel in the prevalent business world but also to find faults in it and try to evolve the system for the better.Business students should be able to criticize business models viability, they should be able to challenge the basic as essenceptions and redesign and re-engineer theories, which in the first place are responsible for the current economic crisis faced by todays world. The business school curriculum should encompass courses that ignite students creativity and encourage him to innovate and come up with viable solutions which benefit the society. Projects with focus on solving world(prenominal) problems such as push cr ises or greener planet should be encouraged, as they infuse a personality of global leadership which is meant to bring a positive change.For a ontogeny country like Pakistan such a focus is imperative as we have been a victim of the keenist mind set in which the wealthy have become wealthier and the poor have become poorer. We are a debt ridden country and sustainable development is answer to all our problems. So, the top notch business schools are responsible to give back leaders who are focused on creating wealth not just for themselves but create an opportunity of living a better life for millions.To sum it all, the burden of responsibility of ethical lapses of business leaders lie on business schools as the system somewhat creates an unharnessed greed for personal success. This needs to be controlled through redesigning the curriculum and the existing environment, which teaches them to be responsible and creates ethically sound leaders instead of shrewd businessmen. Bushra Fa tima, NUST Business School, 2010 6 MBA In Spirit The MBA is meant to be a holistic degree one which infuses analytical ability, provides a sound based of virtual(a) knowledge on basis of which decisions can be made.The two year MBA political platform is challenging and rigorous which does not only infuses a spirit of competition in the student but teaches him to collaborate and work in teams to get greater success. The program is meant to groom a students leadership qualities and gives him courage and knowledge to pursue his ambitions. The MBA is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. It is a degree designed to give you the ability to develop your career to its fullest potential, at an accelerated pace. What will you get out of an MBA?Aside from a powerful life experience, the MBA degree should supply iii main value propositions Skills, Networks, and Brand. Skills These include the hard skills of economics, finance, marketing, operations, charge, and accounting, as well as the soft skills of leadership, teamwork, ethics, and intercourse that are so critical for effective oversight. MBA students acquire these skills inside and outside the classroom. Since MBA programs attract people from very diverse industries and cultures, a program should be able to leverage these differences and translate them into learning opportunities.Networks An MBA degree program offers memory access to a network of MBA students, alumni, capability, and business and community leaders. This network can be very useful when beginning a job search, developing a career path, building business relationships in your current career, or prosecute dependableise outside your current athletic field. For example, entrepreneurs need access to capital, business partners, vendors, and clients. Artsrelated businesses need access to funding and strategic focusing in order to position themselves to be relevant in the marketplace.Global businesses need access to local business cultures as they expand their enterprises to naked as a jaybird territories. Brand The MBA degree is a recognized brand that signifies management and leadership planning. The particular school and attribute of MBA program you attend also have brand associations that can help open doors based on the schools reputation. The strength of a schools brand is based on the programs history, its ability to provide students with technical skills and opportunities for personal growth, and the reach of its alumni and industriousness network.A powerful brand can give you the flexibility to make changes throughout your career. Bushra Fatima, NUST Business School, 2010 7 Concluding Note I believe that MBA should not have specializations in it. It should be a holistic degree in every sense covering courses critical in making organisational strategies. There should be emphasis on leadership and ethical practices. The intent of MBA should be to give the student confidence and help him in career growth. Criti cal Analysis of compassionate Resource Management Its a cliche for placements in todays modern high performance corporate world to say that people are our superior assets.But today the importance of it is all the more accepted. Human capital is a competitive advantage that competitors cannot imitate. So, human imagination management and the practices associated with it have become accepted by managers in all forms of organizations as one of the most important strategic levers to ensure continuing success. The Origins Traditionally cognize as staff office management, was largely an outcome of increased disposal regulations regarding oeuvre conditions, discrimination, employments rights, health and safety concerns etc.In many organizations today, this older fancy of force administration still holds sway with its emphasis on rules and regulation. The modern concept of human pick management finds its roots in the 19th and 20th century by the end of the industrial transition in United States. The notion of employee welfare came into light when managers started to face issues with work force control mainly due to influx of immigrants in the workforce. During this time methods of workforce control were devised and F. W. Taylor came up with the concept of scientific management.Later total heat Ford implemented this concept in his automotive factory. He also came up with the first ever employee welfare department which ensured that no part of employees life effected his/her productivity in the workplace. However the methods were more personnel control oriented. By the 1960s, the notion of personnel management had become well-established with a number of clear field of honors of responsibility attached to it including Selection and enlisting Training and development Pay and conditions Industrial relations Bushra Fatima, NUST Business School, 2010 8 Employee welfare Occupational health and safety. In the 1980s, the concept of human option management b egan to gain ground. At the root of the new thinking about the management of people in organizations was the perception of the increasing competitiveness of the global economy. The success of large Japanese corporations in export markets for traditional westerly products such as cars and electronic goods in the 1970s and 80s took many westerly corporations by surprise. Studies of Japanese corporations emphasized the importance of effective people management in the competitive strategies of these organizations.The studies showed that Japanese employers performed far better than their western competitors in terms of labor productivity and in process unveiling. The key to this success lay in the human resource management practices adopted by Japanese corporations such as Toyota and Matsushita. These practices became evident in western countries as Japanese corporations established manufacturing plants throughout Europe and North America. The human resource management practices which had been so successful in Japan were transplanted with great success to these overseas transplants.The practices included Strict and rigorous selection and recruitment high-pitched level of training, especially induction training and on the job training Team working Multi-skilling Better management-worker communications Use of quality circles and an emphasis on right first time quality hike upment of employee suggestions and innovation Single status symbols such as common canteens and corporate uniforms. The consolidation of these human resource management practices was to create an organizational culture that allowed workers to make out their own success with that of the corporation.Thus, organizational or corporate culture became an important element in understanding the competitive success of firms and was a study theme of management thinking in the early 1980s. These new human resource management practices and the emphasis on the creation and maintenance of corpora te culture stood in sharp contrast to the regulatory view of personnel management that had emerged in the mid-20th century. In fact, many of the new practices were not seen as the exclusive province of the human resource manager but were viewed as the responsibility of line managers in organizations. Bushra Fatima, NUST Business School, 2010 The Criticism Although the roots of human resource management might be relatively clear historically, the term itself and the meaning of human resource management has been the subject of fierce hand amongst practitioners, academics and commentators since its emergence in the early 1990s. Some have simply substituted the term human resource management for personnel management and claimed that everything has remained the same. In some cases, this can be seen in the migration of job titles that took place in the give out decade as the title of human resource manager has replaced that of personnel manager.Others have argued that human resource man agement represents a fundamentally new way of managing people at work that goes well beyond the old functional notion of personnel management and emphasizes the creation of a culture in the workplace that harnesses the commitment of individuals to the organization. Yet others, exasperated with the endless definitional disceptation that seems to surround human resource management, have argued that it is simply an illusion, a manuscript seat which we may see many techniques and practices in operation but which is essentially determined by the observer.However, the notion of employee commitment is one which advances to be implicit in(p) to many of the models and theories of human resource management that have appeared. This notion of harnessing the commitment of employees in organizations was first articulated strongly by Walton (1985) who expound how modern organizations were moving their management styles from one based on control, to one based on commitment. Human resource man agement clearly encompasses the older regulatory hangovers, but goes much further in embracing the management of change, job design, socialization and appraisal as the key levers to achieve organizational success.Modern Human Resource Management The aims of human resource management today are not just integration with the business strategy of the organization, employee commitment, flexibility and quality, but takes commitment as a major(ip) integral element. Human resource management is a distinctive approach to employment management which seeks to achieve competitive advantage through the strategic deployment of a highly committed and capable workforce using an array of cultural, morphological and personnel techniques. The main assumptions underlying the modern concept of human resource management shows how much the concept has progressed from the ld notion of personnel management. Firstly, human resource management is clearly not simply the province of the human resource manager. Line managers play a critical role in human resource management and, in fact, could be argued to be the main Bushra Fatima, NUST Business School, 2010 10 organizational exponents of people management. Secondly, human resource management is intemperately embedded in business strategy. Unlike the personnel manager, the HR manager is part of the top level strategic team in the organization and human resource management plays a key role in the achievement of business success.Thirdly, the shaping of organizational culture is one of the major levers by which effective human resource management can achieve its objectives of a committed workforce. Thus, human resource management is concerned not only with the formal processes of the management of people but also with all the ways in which the organizational culture is established, re-enforced and transmitted. Challenges faced by HR as a Profession The sense that HR is somehow failing to deliver is a central theme in the writings of a num ber of influential American writers.Jeffrey Pfeiffer (1997), for example, writing about the emerging of Human Resource Management, suggests that it would be wrong to conclude that the growing interest in HR and Human Resource Management necessarily means that the coming(prenominal) of the HR function (in its departmental form) is bright My advice is to resist the temptation to believe that HR managers and staff in organizations have a rosy future or a future at all, because there are some profound problems facing human resources as a function within organizations, as contrasted with the study of human resources as a topic area that makes its viability and continued survival problematical. What has emerged so far in this critical military position on HR is that many of the activities that HR professionals engage in appear not to be valued by managers and employees. This is because there is either no evidence that the activities actually achieve things that matter or because it is very unmanageable to prove that what HR does actually results in improvements in behavior and performance.If the last mentioned is the reason, then the task of HR is to look carefully at the way in which it measures and evaluates effectuality if the problem is more to do with what HR does and how it carries out these activities, then the challenge it faces is more fundamental. The HR function is generally criticized to be an accomplice in trends such as downsizing and contingent work arrangements that are often blamed to undo much of the progress made in managing employee relationships in the past several decades. Also HR professionals are accused of showing lack of leadership in demonstrating the business bushel of managing people effectively.Writers such as David Ulrich have suggested redefining HR role not by what it does but by what it delivers results that enrich the organizations value to customers, investors and employees. The four key roles that HR professionals need to play to deliver the contributions are as follows ? A partner in strategy execution This doesnt mean that HR should take responsibility for HR and business strategy, which is rightly the domain of the chief executive, but that the head Bushra Fatima, NUST Business School, 2010 11 of the HR department should be an equal partner with other senior managers and should have a seat at the top table. An administrative expert This is about getting the basics right and adopting a much more instrumental approach to the use of procedures. The emphasis needs to be on the efficiency of the HR department reducing its cost base and velocity up its cycle times, without compromising on quality or effectiveness ? An employee champion This is about HR recognizing that work intensification and an increased sense of peril are becoming the new reality for many people and that this is associated with trimmed levels of employee commitment.This, in turn, affects the preparedness of employees to contribut e more than their contracted level of bm and performance. The role of HR here is to ensure that employees remain engaged and committed, or become re-engaged, either directly through the activities of HR or by HR working with line managers to ensure that they can create a positive psychological and emotional working environment. ? A change actor harmonise to Ulrich (1997), this role involves HR in building the organizations capacity to embrace and to capitalize on change.Given that change is the norm for most organizations, the ability to implement and manage the change process is seen as critical to the organizations ability to function during the change process and to reap the benefits from the changes that have been made. Reducing resistance to change is seen as a key HR contribution. Gaps between HR Academics & Practice Theres an incontestable breach between whats happening in scholarly research and whats happening in the world of practitioner.However, theres consensus among academics and research-savvy HR professionals, that HR managers who follow evidence-based principles are best positioned to optimize the success of their organizations. Still, most HR professionals have little time, interest or tolerance for reading researches. Practitioners focus on solving problems and getting tasks done in time- and pressure-packed settings. Academics explore, contemplate and pursue research that can take three years or more before culminating in a ledger article. HR practitioners dont care about the theory behind the practices.They dont care why processes, tests, or other instruments or procedures work, just that they do. If clothing plaid instead of polka dots on Tuesdays increases retention, theyll do it. According to a business school professor, People requisite to Bushra Fatima, NUST Business School, 2010 12 see cost-benefit analyses before they implement. Its not enough to know structured interviews will give you better-quality people. Practitioners want to see how it affects the bottom line. Research and academic findings may not always have concrete outcomes.For practitioners ambiguity doesnt help. They want concrete solutions supported with business outcomes something translated into profits, often missing in HR research. Academics tend to be interested in different subjects than practitioners. For practitioners, those subjects may be too theoretical or too esoteric, or may not be a need-to-know priority. But for academics, whose careers rise or fall on their success at achieving tenure and promotion, the topics are influenced by what the academic reward structure requires.Fault lies with HR curriculums. HR curriculums should develop the competency in all HR professionals to know what is and is not a scientifically based finding or conclusion. We need to audit our curriculums to make sure students are being taught to appreciate the importance of evidence-based management and the role of research in advancing HR. That requires b asic understanding of math and statistics. Most undergraduate business and industrial psychology curriculums feature at least one course in statistics, and some observers say that should suffice.In recent years, faculty members have been reluctant to add more quantitative requirements to HR curriculums for fear of losing students. According to my observations most people choose HR because they are math-phobic. Also there is little emphasis on doing research and supporting it quantitatively. In most MBA programs graduate students are not being asked to do research or even read it. When I asked an MBA student his point of view about research, he said MBA students dont like reading research, so instead students are just discussing cases and practicing being a leader. The HR curriculum should be designed in a way that forces students to engage in consulting. Thus, forcing them to connect the taught courses with field knowledge and enabling them to do hands on research and get comfortabl e with statistics. This will force them to do analysis and make interpretations. Academics who corn liquor as consultants are more likely to relate to the realities of the workplace. Encourage faculty and practitioners to develop and partner in research. Establish conferences or thinktank sessions that bring them together. Encourage exchanges.Cross attendance does occur, but not in enough verse to create a shared comfort zone. Businesspeople should also fall in with researchers to enhance body of knowledge and include practical aspects rather than infeasible theories. Another way to increase practical knowledge base is to support sponsored research. Corporations should invest in academics doing research that practitioners need. Experts agree that applied research should find three criteria. It should be ? ? ? Rigorousconducted scientifically so the results can be validated and replicated.Relevantdirected at learning more about, furthering or solving some HR-related problem. Rea dableaccessible to practitioners who stand to benefit. Bushra Fatima, NUST Business School, 2010 13 Conclusion As a profession HR needs to correspond its value by aligning itself with organizations strategy and focus on achieving business strategy instead of just working as a support function. The HR academia suffers in terms of creating practical value because of its lack of collaboration with HR practitioners. The two can benefit each other and enhance body of knowledge which is far better applicable in real work environments.