Many
believe that management education has contributed to the systemic failure of
today's leaders. After reading the Podolny (2009) article, in your reflection
blog share your thoughts on how business schools can best prepare future
leaders to adopt a holistic approach to business problems and ethical dilemmas.
Be sure to share benchmarks and examples of how some of the B-Schools are
accomplishing this.
It is
no secret that many people have an issue with what they perceive the typical
business personnel to be. Many people believe that business men and women in
today’s society are crooks and are only out for their own good and wealth. With
large cases like “Enron” and the fact that many CEO’s earn vast amounts of
money compared to their subordinates much further below, it is no surprise that
the MBA students and schools can sometimes have a bad reputation.
In
this article Podolny talks about what is lacking in the education of an MBA,
not until recently schools have begun to show interest and also a need in
exploring the benefits of classes dealing with leadership, ethics, and business
law. “With corporate scandals and billion-dollar
bankruptcies dominating headlines for more than a year, ethics has become
almost a hotter topic than earnings on business-school campuses” (Newsweek,
2003). Business schools have come a long way from
what the normal topics were considered to be, from the 1950’s to the 1990’s
many business schools were mainly concerned with analytics, the numbers side of
business. In many major business schools today, there is a culture in which
many people have heated discussions on ethics and how to be a good leader. As a
proud student of the Embry Riddle business school, I myself am amazed by all of
the different topics which we have covered in this business leadership degree.
What
many people have come to realize, and what I believe is the future of business,
is the leadership qualities which a manager will possess. It seems to me that the analytics portion of
business, all though it is very important, this is a job which can be
accomplished by a computer with today’s technology. The part if business which
cannot be taken over by technology will be the leadership portion of it, a
computer can never compute what is ethical and have good moral standing. It is
important that as business students we realize that even though technology will
take away some jobs, good business leaders will be able to find new ways to
make their business much more successful.
As
business students if we are to regain the trust of the people which we serve,
we need to recapture the human side to business and not solely look at the
profit which we can make through loop holes. I thought it was a great idea
which Podolny had when he said “Managers can learn from doctors and lawyers. Before those professions
had strong national associations, they created governing groups, usually
connected to universities, which certified individuals as worthy of practice.
In the same way, a business school, its faculty, and its graduates can
constitute a governing group” (Podolny, 2009). This is a great new approach and
the right direction we need to take towards having accountability in this
profession. It is a way to restore trust in not only the MBA, but also in the
business student and in the business man. If business men and women deal with
human lives, large sums of money, and the future of our nation; similar to how
doctors and lawyers do, then why should we not be held accountable to the same
standard as they are? I believe that having a business degree which can be
revoked if you are involved in unethical work is a step in the right direction.
A step like this could change the way in we hire future business employees, and
it will also hold us all accountable.
I believe that future
of the business world is a strong one because we have continued to evolve on
many different fronts. There are so many different topics which range from
ethics, to leadership, to even the way we handle business with other cultures
across the globe. The business schools seem to be heading in the right
direction, it is only a matter of time before the rest of the world gets on board
and realizes that the business man or women of the future is a truly developed
being with skills in many departments.
References
-
Podolny, J. M. (2009). The Buck Stops (and Starts) at Business
School. Harvard Business Review, 87(6), 62-67.
- "An Ethical Dilema." News
Week, 18 Feb. 2003. Web. 14 Aug. 2015.
<http://www.newsweek.com/ethical-dilemma-139869>.
