For more than an hour, business students from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology fumbled their way around a park, ferry or marketplace in complete darkness, relying on instructions from a visually impaired guide.
The December visit to Dialogue in the Dark, a social enterprise in Mei Foo, was a rewarding experience for the students. Organised by a group of HKUST business majors, it was aimed at rousing the students' concern for people who are less privileged as part of a corporate social responsibility (CSR) project.
Since the global financial crisis of 2008, business schools have been putting more emphasis on ethics and CSR in their teaching. The crisis laid bare an array of questionable corporate practices, including failed leadership, unacknowledged conflicts of interest, insufficient accountability, a lack of transparency and excessive greed.
'Societies have bigger expectations of business schools since the financial tsunami,' says Professor Leonard Cheng Kwok-hon, dean of HKUST's business school. 'They want graduates with higher ethical standards.'
From September, the university's business students will take two courses, rather than one, centred on moral values - one focusing on personal ethics and the other on corporate social responsibility. Other universities are also stepping up such training. At Baptist University, business majors will be required to take a core course on the subject, and ethical concepts will be incorporated into core courses for majors in subjects ranging from marketing to accounting. Chinese University says its business curriculum is embedded with similar concepts.
Dialogue in the Dark helped the students experience first hand how a social enterprise - which applies business strategies to philanthropic goals - operates.