Social responsibility and ethics are to become compulsory subjects for students in the Chinese University of Hong Kong's MBA programme next year, covering issues such as good citizenship, staff relationships and environmental protection.
'People used to think university students know what is ethical, but that may not be true. Their values are being shaped by the media and mass culture,' said programme director Andrew Chan Chi-fai. More in-depth discussion on the value of being socially responsible was needed, he said. Students will discuss case studies including current issues and may be given an ethics test to see how they would respond in difficult situations.
Richard Schmalensee, dean of the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said on a visit to Hong Kong last week that since Enron's collapse, US campuses had been full of debate on the meaning of social responsibility.
The school is redesigning its MBA programmes to sharpen the focus on innovation, but 'a secondary thrust' will be to encourage sensitivity and critical analysis, so students can recognise ethical issues.
Meanwhile, the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, which has a strong Catholic background, has responded to growing interest in ethical issues among business schools by introducing an eight-week course on spirituality and its impact on peoples' lives, as part of its MBA. Students are introduced to role models who practise their religious faith.
'Business education is not just to help people succeed. It is our job to engage students into thinking what kind of life they want to lead as they go into making a business,' said Carolyn Woo, dean of the university's Medoza College of Business, on a recent visit to the SAR.