About the Olsson Center
History
In 1966, the Elis and Signe Olsson family of West Point, Virginia, founded an agency to focus on "efforts to improve standards of behavior in both public and private business" at the University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business Administration. Over the past three decades, the Olsson Center has helped heighten awareness of ethical and moral issues in business.
Vision
- To be one of the leading sources of thinking about the role of ethics in business.
- To enhance the intellectual life of the University of Virginia by contributing to a University-wide conversation about the role of ethics in modern society.
Center Activities
The teaching program in ethics at the Darden School.
A Ph.D. degree program in management with an emphasis on business ethics. The Darden School is the only business school with this program.
Working closely with its "sister" institute, the Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics (BRICE), also located at Darden.
Editorial responsibilities for the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Business Ethics published by the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Management.
Visiting Scholar's Program. Olsson fellows — scholars from around the world — spend between one week and one semester at the Olsson Center working on joint research projects with center members.
Publications for academics and practitioners.
Case studies in business ethics, health care ethics and environmental ethics.
Development of joint ethics programs with the School of Medicine, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia.
Presentation of lectures on applied ethics issues worldwide.
Grants and proposals including three NSF grants with engineering faculty on ethical issues on environmental design, and a program in technology and ethics.
Involvement with the UVA-wide Institute for Practical Ethics.
Administration
The Director of the Olsson Center is Andrew C. Wicks, Associate Professor of Business Administration, who holds the Ruffin Professorship in Business Ethics and is director of the doctoral program at Darden.
Wicks joined the Darden faculty in 2002 after spending the previous 10 years teaching business ethics at the University of Washington Graduate Business School. He has written widely on a variety of topics in business ethics including stakeholder theory, trust, total quality management, accounting ethics and managed care. His articles have appeared in a range of top journals in business ethics, management, and the humanities including Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, Soundings and Business Ethics Quarterly. He has won awards for his teaching and his research.
The center's programs are conducted by the directors and senior fellows from universities and business corporations. This combination of educators and executives ensures that center programs and projects remain relevant to scholars, students, alumni and other executives.
R. Edward Freeman, Elis & Signe Olsson Professor of Business Administration and Senior Fellow of the Olsson Center, is an internationally recognized authority on stakeholder management — how to understand and manage the multiple changes and challenges in today's business environment, and on the connection between business ethics and corporate strategy. Freeman has received numerous awards in recognition of outstanding teaching at Wharton, Minnesota and Darden. He is a past president of the Society for Business Ethics.
Jared Harris, Assistant Professor of Business Administration and Senior Fellow of the Olsson Center, teaches both ethics and strategy courses in Darden’s MBA program, and a doctoral seminar on corporate governance and ethics. His research centers on the interplay between ethics and strategy, with a particular focus on the topics of corporate governance, business ethics and interorganizational trust. His work on corporate financial misrepresentation won the 2007 "best dissertation" award in one division of the Academy of Management (Social Issues in Management) and qualified him as one of six finalists in another division (Business Policy and Strategy). His work has been published in Organization Science and Business & Professional Ethics Journal and has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post and The New Yorker, as well as other media outlets in the United States, Canada, Germany, India and the UK.
Alexander B. Horniman, Professor of Business Administration and Senior Fellow of the Olsson Center, teaches in the area of strategy, leadership and change with additional interests in managerial psychology, diversity and applied ethics. He served as the first director of the Olsson Center and continues to give ethics seminars in public, corporate and association groups.
For More Information
Olsson Center for Applied Ethics
The Darden School
University of Virginia
100 Darden Boulevard
P.O. Box 6550
Charlottesville, VA 22906-6550
Telephone: (434) 924-7247
Fax: (434) 924-6378
Email: acw2z@virginia.edu
Website: http://www.darden.virginia.edu/olsson