Recommended Actions

For Business School Leadership:

1. Advocate and strongly support the inclusion of ethics throughout the course, curriculum, and community.

2. Demonstrate institutional commitment to ethics and responsible business conduct through explicit statements and activities of the institution.

3. Provide funding and support for research in ethics across other core business disciplines.

4. Support that core ethics faculty have appropriate background in moral philosophy.

For Faculty:

1. Renew efforts at gaining acceptance of business ethics as a stand-alone course and integrating across curriculum.

2. Encourage students to actively engage in business ethics discussions across the curriculum in all courses.

3. Integrate ethics across all other core business disciplines and other core business content into stand-alone ethics courses.

4. Perform research in areas within core discipline which overlaps with ethics discipline.

5. Engage the business community in actively building faculty knowledge of business practice.

6. Search for cutting-edge business ethics issues and opportunities to develop new cases and teaching materials.

7. Express a strong commitment to considering ethical dimensions throughout courses, curriculum, and community.

For Business School Students:

1. Envision themselves as future ethical business leaders and act accordingly.

2. Clarify personal ethical boundaries and determine what will or will not be done.

3. Integrate ethical thinking into other courses throughout the curriculum.

4. Engage in ethics-focused, extracurricular conversations and activities.

5. Initiate discussions of ethics and values as key criteria of the overall employment recruiting process.

For Business Leaders:

1. Clarify values within the organization.

2. Weigh responsible business behavior as part of merit review and performance evaluation process.

3. Pursue opportunities to make statements, visit classrooms, and share leading practices (successes and failures).

4. Provide research and internship opportunities for faculty and students interested in the study of applied business ethics.

5. Offer feedback to business school leaders on the level of sophistication of the ethical decision-making ability of the schools’ graduates.

6. Recognize the value of ethics experience and expertise in recruitment, operating, and strategic.

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The Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics (www.corporate-ethics.org) is an independent entity established in partnership with Business Roundtable—an association of chief executive officers of leading corporations with a combined workforce of more than 10 million employees and $4.5 trillion in annual revenues—and leading academics from America’s best business schools. The Institute, which is housed at the University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, brings together leaders from business and academia to fulfill its mission to renew and enhance the link between ethical behavior and business practice through executive education programs, practitioner-focused research and outreach.

Thank you for your interest in the Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics.