Ethics Case Studies Needed at B-Schools

The Wall Street Journal ran an interview with London Business School senior fellow Craig Smith, who also leads a project with the European Academy of Business in Society to get CSR into mainstream business courses. Smith says the biggest obstacles to getting MBA courses to teach ethics effectively is a lack of case studies, which business schools often use as a main part of their curriculum in general.

"We did an audit and found that about 1,000 cases out there with something on corporate responsibility, but many are not usable because they're dated or because social responsibility is only tangential to the case," Smith said.

Smith also said many professors simply feel reluctant discussing ethical issues because it is out of their "comfort zone," but he recommends professors use discussions to spark debate.

Getting people to think about ethics is what the Carnegie Council is all about. Our program Global Policy Innovations publishes Policy Innovations online magazine, which features innovative solutions to ethical problems in the context of economic globalization. We have a section devoted to these Innovations here. You could call them case studies in global civil society solutions.

Our program has also launched a workshop series that serves as a dialogue between corporations and civil society. At these workshops, participants learn about corporate and civil society approaches to shared ethical problems. Read about and listen to the first iteration with BP, GE, the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, and the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility here.