The role of business schools in managing the incongruence between doing what is right and doing what it takes to get ahead

✍ Scribed by Robert H. Schwartz; Sami Kassem; Dean Ludwig

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1991
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 440 KB
• Volume: 10
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0167-4544
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00382830

✦ Synopsis

This paper accepts as given that business students want to get ahead. It criticizes business schools for their failure to reduce the incongruence between doing what is right and doing what it takes to get ahead. Because of this failure business school graduates carry negative ideas, attitudes and behaviors vis-~t-vis social responsibility from business schools into the business world. Recommendations are made for increasing the social responsibility of business schools.

Over the last century the priorities of American higher education have shifted from a focus on the training of ministers and civic leaders for an agrarian society to a focus on the training of specialists and managers for an industrial and service-oriented society. This shift has been accompanied by a growing emphasis on competition, efficiency and technology, often at the expense of social awareness and community values (Reich, 1970;Reid, 1980). Business schools, which reflect the emphasis on competidon, efficiency and technology, offer coursework in business ethics in an effort to link socially conscious values with the exigencies of today's business world. The long-term goal of this coursework is, presumably, more socially conscious thinking and behavior