Boston Business College Leading the “Ethical” Way

Back to School II

This year, a number of graduates of Harvard Business School took an unusual step. Just prior to graduation, they took a voluntary oath patterned after the professional oaths which are required for practicing attorneys and doctors. For these newly minted MBA’s, pledging to act ethically as they take the reins of corporate America somehow seemed right given the meltdown of the country’s financial system at the hands of some of their predecessors. Part of the oath taken states that, “I will manage my enterprise in good faith, guarding against decisions and behavior that advance my own narrow ambitions but harm the enterprise and societies it serves.”

Whether the voluntary oath taken by these Harvard MBA’s represents a permanent shift in thinking at business schools, or their graduates, remains to be seen. For a number of business colleges, the uncertainty of the business climate and the meting out of blame for the financial crisis has led to introspection by administrators, faculty and students and a possible rethink about business school curriculums. Some critics have argued that a business school mentality which has emphasized short-term seeking of profits and an acceptance of risky market behavior has contributed to a culture of turning out business leaders who are not grounded in business ethics. While many schools have a course or two in ethics, or have established extracurricular ethics centers on campus, none has done much to radically reshape the nature of an MBA education with respect to ethics. None, until now.

Just a few miles away from Harvard sits a 100 year old college, New England College of Business (NECB.) This is a college of 700 students which has evolved along with the financial services industry whose employees have traditionally comprised the College’s student body. Since 1909, CEO’s of banks, insurance and mutual funds companies have sat on the Board of NECB. They have also supplied its faculty, insuring that employees would be mentored in an apprentice or conservatory type of learning environment. Last year, in the wake of the current crisis, the College decided that it would not pursue bringing another MBA degree to the higher education marketplace, but instead, the College opted to offer an MBE degree, a Master’s in Business Ethics and Compliance.

Instead of making ethics and compliance matters an afterthought in courses, the College placed these topics front and center and then convinced accreditors and higher education licensing bodies that this was a degree program whose time had come. The program uses both traditional instruction and also the case method – especially in looking at what went wrong with some infamous corporations such as Enron. Courses such as the “Culture of Ethics and Competition” are balanced with more hard-nosed “Forensic Accounting”; the graduates not only learn what makes good governance and ethical conduct, but they can also spot problems in their companies before they get out of hand.

To help formulate the curriculum, NECB brought in several leading thinkers from local government including the former Attorney General of Massachusetts, Scott Harshbarger, as well as leaders from the compliance side, including the chief compliance officer for State Street Bank.

“We wanted to make sure that our curriculum was pragmatically grounded and not just an exercise in philosophy” said Dr. Carol Anderson, the College’s Vice President of Academic Affairs, who became so enamored with the MBE program that she, herself has been teaching some of the courses. With the expected overhaul in financial regulations, the number of compliance jobs is likely to grow exponentially. NECB might just be at the head of the curve and have a degree program from which graduates can get jobs – instead of seeking positions in the current downsized market.

For would be MBA students, the concept of getting an MBE may be a reach – even with the prospect of more compliance positions and the shift in business culture that is underway. For those students who recently joined the MBE program at New England College of Business, there is no question that they believe they have made the right choice.

For example, Kathy Robson, a Senior Vice President at Rockland Trust, recently said, “My company was in the process of developing an anti-fraud program when I started the MBE program and I was actually able to use my coursework around federal sentencing guidelines to develop best practices in the creation of this program.”

For the College’s president, Howard E. Horton, Esq., who worked along with the industry and governmental advisors to shape the MBE curriculum, the MBE is a degree which can help to keep companies on an even keel and to avoid risky behavior. “If every company with more than 50 employees had at least one person with an MBE taking a central role in governance, compliance and ethics, “Horton said, “We’d have a stronger and healthier economy in the long run.” Only time will tell whether the MBE or similar degree will be developed at other colleges and universities. For now, New England College of Business doesn’t mind being ahead of the market.

Contacts

New England College of Business
Howard E. Horton, Esq., 617-951-2350 x. 302
Howard.horton {at} NECB(.)edu