Ethical dilemmas

These values are both universal and personal:

For three consecutive years, the dilemma responses of the students from INSEEC Alpes-Savoie systematically highlighted the duo “tradition-compliance” as a dominating value, although tests were carried out on three different cohorts of students (each made of 70 students on average).

At emlyon, where we carried out tests from 2014 to 2019 on Master students (about 400 students were questioned yearly) and on MBA students (the entire cohort), the security value is the one which systematically prevails. These results show that no generalization can be made, and that business schools cannot be lumped together in one pot.

Obviously, each business school attracts specific profiles and plays a different role as an agent of socialization. A general critic alike that of Mintzberg does not make much sense.

Regarding the MBA participants, the dominating value of “security” is also counterintuitive in comparison with the image these programs usually drag along.

The second result, no less surprising, ranks the power value systematically in final position. Again, the collected responses are in contradiction with the oversimplified image of MBA programs filled with upstarts.

The impact of the cultures of big corporations business school students tend to go to, may explain such result. These multinationals are often focused on procedure compliance and security issues. Especially since MBA students are strongly marked by their first professional experience, often carried out in a big corporation. This prevalence for the security value can also be explained by students feeling anxious as tracks are less and less secured. After school, careers are increasingly uncertain.

In conclusion, business schools as institutions, remain under the pressure of their environment on subjects such as CSR and ethics. But the real challenge, the real transformation, will come and is already coming, from the students. Without being fully aware of it, this generation of students between 20 and 30 years old, is looking for purpose, perspectives for a future which no longer rimes with hierarchical careers leading to fabulous wages. A few classes on ethics and CSR sprinkled here and there no longer correspond to their values.

It is high time that business schools question and adjust their teachings to meet participants’ expectations in order not to allow any Henry Mintzberg to note that: “The MBA trains the right people but in the wrong way!”.

This article was written with the precious collaboration of Damien Richard, teacher-researcher in management, business ethics and environmental and societal corporate responsibility at INSEEC, and with that of Geoffroy Murat, researcher attached to the CREGO of the Université de Bourgogne, and the research chair in health management at work of Grenoble.

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