The ethics of MBA students

I wrote something yesterday about how to objectively look at the rankings of business programs and mentioned in passing my opinion that a student’s ethical behavior is something that will not be influenced by his two years in an MBA program. An article I came across today helps illustrate my point.

 

“MBA students were more likely to cheat than students in other faculties, he (Donald McCabe, lead researcher and business strategy professor at Rutgers University) said, because MBA students were focused on "getting the job done versus how they got it done. They will suggest in the business world the emphasis is on getting the job done at any cost."

 

I have my own explanation as to why this is. MBA students are just more self interested than those in other programs. In almost every MBA program students are required to take an ethics class. I took one during my first year. In the class we discussed cases such as how to allocate a scarce, life saving, resource among tons of people who are dying from a disease. My problem with the class is that very rarely did we discuss anything that a typical MBA student will actually encounter during the tenure of his career. A good example is … let’s say your business school buddy who now works on Wall Street gives you some inside information about a merger that will very likely take place … what do you do with the information? Would you use it to make money via inside trading? And if you were to go ahead and do it, who gets hurt in this situation?

 

Judging from another article that I read a month ago, it looks like a lot of folks with MBA’s have been choosing to go ahead and use the inside information to benefit themselves. Once again self interest trumps ethics.