Managers for Good

These are the 63 MBA students from Shanghai Jiaotong University who I have been teaching for the past two weeks. They have taken two years out of their managerial careers to achieve an MBA and the title of my course was "Management Ethics and CSR" which enabled us to have lively discussion on doing good and doing well through business. Jiaotong University are making a strong statement by making the course 'core' and not elective. The subject areas are eminently practical despite the need to lay a foundation of ethical theory and virtue ethics. We covered topics such as the Foreign and Corrupt Practices Act (USA), 'budgetary gaming', CSR practice and going beyond CSR into sustainable enterprise as strategy.

We were never very far from the moral agency of the leader in relating to stakeholders and shareholders and in making moral commitments rather than instrumentalising codes of ethics and CSR. I have no doubt that my students want to manage for good through their businesses - but the challenges and temptations are immense. I was very impressed by one of my students who, in the context of a lecture on virtue ethics, shared the "seven deadly sins" with the class. He proceeded to tell us that he got the list not from church but through watching films! Confucian wisdom helped us out a little and I shared one of his quotes with the class: “He who acts with a constant view to his own advantage will be much murmured against.” (Analects, 1971 XV, xii, p.169). I guess the key word in that quote is "constant" which implies that such a person never considers how the advantage of another may have a higher call than their own.