Community Connections to Enhance Undergraduate International Business Education: An Example of Business Consulting Projects

Practical project experience as a means of augmenting traditional classroom learning has long been viewed as a value adding curricular exercise. While students participating in the projects gain valuable skills that will enhance their personal marketability, successful projects also benefit the client companies involved and help enhance the image of the university. Substantial effort goes into planning and implementing such an experience and involves extensive coordination with multiple constituents. This article details how a project-based capstone experience was developed in partnership with the local business community and the College's Center for International Business as part of the degree requirements for a relatively new Bachelor of Science in International Business program.     

Leadership in challenging times

It's an understatement to say that the current business climate is a challenging one. Tom Brown weighed the insights offered at London Business School's Global Leadership Summit and offers the best thoughts on what it takes to lead organizations right now.     

Business ethics,Corporate Good Citizenship and the Corporate Social Policy Process: A view from the United States

Within the American context, the term Corporate Good Citizenship, a rather vague and somewhat dated notion, bears little relationship to the concept of Business Ethics. Whereas the latter refers to systematic reflection on the moral significance of the institutions, policies and behavior of business actors in the normal course of their business operations, the former is a subset of the broader notion of Corporate Social Responsibility and denotes, generally, discretionary, possibly altruistic, non-business relationships between business organizations and diverse community stakeholders. A newer concept, the Corporate Social Policy Process, which focuses on the institutionalization within business organizations of processes facilitating individual and organizational reflection and choice regarding the moral significance of personal and organizational action together with a consideration of the likely consequences of such action, provides analytical linkages between Business Ethics and Corporate Good Citizenship which can be useful to business scholars and operating managers alike. Specific aspects of Corporate Good Citizenship, including corporate community involvements, are examined and particular attention is paid to current trends in corporate donations, including an increasing emphasis on strategic philanthropy which explicitly mixes practical and benevolent motives in company giving policies and practices.Edwin M. Epstein is Professor of Business Administration at the University of California at Berkeley. A former chair of the Social Issues in Management Division of the Academy of Management, he has lectured and published extensively in the field of Business and Public Policy with a particular emphasis on the Social Role of the Corporation in the United States and other Advanced Industrial Societies.Bryan W. Husted, Esq., a doctoral student in the Business and Public Policy Program at the Berkeley Business School, University of California at Berkeley, rendered useful research assistance and Mary Ann Huisman for the Program in Business and Social Policy, Center For Research in Management, Berkeley Business School, University of California at Berkeley, provided helpful technical services which I gratefully acknowledge.     

Short-term global business immersion courses: Short-term program,long-term effects?

This article explores the potential impact of short-term global business immersion courses designed for undergraduate students at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business. As part of the Global Foundations Core curriculum, the school offers students a unique opportunity to study a country or region in depth in the classroom and then participate in an accompanying short-term study program abroad. In this article, multiple Kelley faculty who teach global immersion courses offer context-specific strategies and insights into classroom teaching and observed outcomes for student learning. Research shows that short-term study-abroad programs can offer transformative opportunities for students when intentionally designed as part of curriculum, affecting attitudes toward environmental citizenship and shaping global careers. The Chronicle of Education reports that even short study-abroad programs can have a lasting effect. To date, the Kelley School has not measured for standardized learning outcomes across its 14 existing global immersion courses, so this article does not offer commentary on program-wide student learning. However, through analyses of their on-campus course design and respective overseas program activities, Global Business Immersion program faculty share insights into student learning as observed in their individual programs. Our intent is to capture the impact of the courses through the lens of faculty program directors and student participants in three programs across three continents. In addition, we contribute to future research on similar global academic initiatives and add to the expanding body of knowledge on the impacts of short-term study abroad.     

Community involvement projects in Wharton's MBA curriculum

This article describes the evolution of extra-mural team projects in the Wharton School's new MBA curriculum, emphasizing both the benefits of doing community service and the value these projects have in providing real work opportunities for learning teams; five- or six-person student groups that do collective tasks in Foundations of Leadership and other required courses throughout the first of a two-year program. Stewart D. Friedman joined the Wharton School faculty in 1984. As director of the Wharton Leadership Program, he is responsible for the required MBA course, Foundations of Leadership. He also directs the Wharton Life Interests Project, which is concerned with work/life balance. An award-winning teacher, he writes and consults with organizations on leadership development, work/life balance, team effectiveness, and the dynamics of change.     

Women’s Roles on U.S. Fortune 500 Boards: Director Expertise and Committee Memberships

This study examines the presence and roles of female directors of U.S. Fortune 500 firms, focusing on committee assignments and director background. Prior work from almost two decades ago concludes that there is a systematic bias against females in assignment to top board committees. Examining a recent data set with a logistic regression model that controls for director and firm characteristics, director resource-dependence roles and interaction between director gender and director characteristics, we find that female directors are less likely than male directors to sit on executive committees and more likely than male directors to sit on public affairs committees. There is little if any evidence of systematic gender bias in director assignment to other board committees. We find some evidence that boards evaluate resource dependence differently for women than men. Craig A. Peterson Western Michigan University, Grand Rapios, MI 49503, USA Craig A. Peterson is associate professor of finance at Western Michigan University, Grand Rapids Regional Center. In addition to corporate governance, his research interests include investment management and corporate finance. James Philpot is assistant professor of finance and general business at Missouri State University. His research interests include corporate governance, financial planning and financial education.     

Critical service learning across two required marketing classes

Business service learning projects have the potential to be a state-of-the-art instructional laboratory to teach and apply theory and make a substantial impact on the community. In this article, the author presents a service learning project that is embedded in two consecutive required courses of the marketing major and has been conducted and expanded by consecutive marketing teams over the last four years. The project follows a critical service learning pedagogy in that it redistributes power among stakeholders, promotes the development of authentic relationships, and works for social change. Insight is provided for other business faculty engaging in service learning projects.     

Boards of Directors’ Self Interest: Expanding for Pay in Corporate Acquisitions?

Director compensation can potentially represent an ethical minefield. When faced with supporting strategic decisions that can lead to an increase in director pay, directors may consider their own interests and not solely those of the shareholders to whom they are legally bound to represent. In such cases, directors essentially become agents, rather than those installed to protect principals (shareholders) from agents. Using acquisitions as a study context, we employ a matched-pair design and find a statistically significant difference in outside director compensation between acquiring and control firms. Outside directors of acquiring firms earn more than twice as much as their counterparts in the matched-sample. S. Trevis Certo is an associate professor and Mays Research Fellow in the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University. He received his Ph.D. in Strategic Management from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. His research focuses on corporate governance (boards of directors, ownership structure, and CEO compensation), top management teams, initial public offerings (IPOs), and research methodology. Richard H. Lester is a clinical associate professor and Director of Academic Entrepreneurship Programs in the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University. He received his Ph.D. degree in Strategic Management from the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University. His current research interests focus on corporate governance, upper echelons and entrepreneurship. Catherine M. Dalton holds the David H. Jacobs Chair of Strategic Management in the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. She also serves as Editor of Business Horizons, as Research Director of the Institute for Corporate Governance, and as a Fellow in the Randall L. Tobias Center for Leadership Excellence. She received her Ph.D. degree in Strategic Management from the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. Professor Dalton's research is in corporate governance, with particular expertise in board composition, board leadership structure, executive and director compensation, and firms' ownership structures. Her research spans all types of organizations, including entrepreneurial firms, small businesses, large public corporations, and private organizations. Dan R. Dalton is the founding Director of the Institute for Corporate Governance, Dean Emeritus, and the Harold A. Poling Chair of Strategic Management in the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. He is a Fellow of the Management in the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. He is a fellow of the Academy of Management and an inaugural member of its Journals Hall of Fame. Professor Dalton is widely published, with over 280 articles in corporate governance, business strategy, law, and ethics. Additionally, his work has been frequently featured in the business and financial press including, Business Week, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Economist, Financial Times, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and the Washington Post. Professor Dalton regularly addresses public, corporate, and industry groups on corporate governance issues.     

Putting American Pragmatism to Work in the Classroom

The pragmatic inquiry process used in the Corporantes Pathfinder Notebook (CPN) enables students and others to discern their gifts, find purpose and direction in their lives, and seek a FIT between their values and various corporate cultures before making extensive commitments in their field of studies and their employment. Based on Peirce's theory of Pragmatism the CPN fosters investigation, interpretation, and action resulting from reflected narratives written in response to a series of questions in the CPN. The CPN was used successfully as a framework in a Business Ethics course for connecting career decisions to their personal lives. Other pedagogic activities were used such as case studies, role playing, service learning, team projects investigating ethical climates of corporations, as well as Socratic questioning and discussions of moral dilemmas to develop ethical sensitivity and understanding of ethical challenges and decisions. The CPN also has been used successfully by senior executives in over fifty applications.     

Australian Business Majors and Their Attitudes Toward the Teaching of Business Ethics

Seven hundred seventy-three questionnaires were completed by students enrolled in an undergraduate business administration program at a university in Victoria. The survey instrument was adapted from one used by Professor John Milton-Smith (1992) in his Australian Business Ethics Project. The results indicated that (a) students place importance on business ethics education, (b) students who have taken a business ethics course found that experience to be valuable, (c) students view ethical behavior as leading to positive outcomes for the corporation and (d) some measures are underway in Australian higher education and in the community at large to enhance learning in this area.     

Getting what we wish for: The realities of business education for a global economy

Business schools around the world have embraced globalization and, as a result, attempted to attract international students to their programs. Teaching diverse student groups has many advantages, but is not without its challenges, including cultural differences in educational expectations and student self-efficacy. The goal of this article is to suggest that we can create plans and activities capable of helping Asian students adapt more quickly to the expectations of Western education. We herein describe Rotterdam Business School's experiences in working with a diverse—mainly Asian—population of students, focusing on strategies that may assist them in adapting to the expectations of the global business school classroom.     

Google in China: A Manager-Friendly Heuristic Model for Resolving Cross-Cultural Ethical Conflicts

Management practitioners and scholars have worked diligently to identify methods for ethical decision making in international contexts. Theoretical frameworks such as Integrative Social Contracts Theory (Donaldson and Dunfee, 1994, Academy of Management Review 19, 252–284) and more recently the Global Business Citizenship Approach [Wood et al., 2006, Global Business Citizenship: A Transformative Framework for Ethics and Sustainable Capitalism. (M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, NY)] have produced innovations in practice. Despite these advances, many managers have difficulty implementing these theoretical concepts in daily practice. Using the example of recent decisions by internet service providers Google, Yahoo, and MSN regarding censorship requirements in China, we offer six heuristic questions to help managers to resolve cross-cultural ethical conflicts in which the firm’s way of doing business differs from the practice in the host country. Recognizing that companies can take different approaches to law and ethics (Paine, 1994, Harvard Business Review 72(2), 107–117), our aim is to provide a management decision process to deal with demands or opportunities for engaging in questionable business practices in a host country.     

Integrative Social Contract Theory and Urban Prosperity Initiatives

Urban communities in 21st century America are facing severe economic challenges, ones that suggest a mandate to contemplate serious changes in the way America does business. The middle class is diminishing in many parts of the country, with consequences for the economy as a whole. When faced with the loss of its economic base, any business community must make some difficult decisions about its proper role and responsibilities. Decisions to support the community must be balanced alongside and against responsibilities to owners, shareholders and relevant “stakeholders” in a relatively new context. Corporations in urban communities “hollowed out” by white flight or urban sprawl must decide what level of support they can and should provide. This paper examines corporate decisions within the emerging urban prosperity initiatives, using the framework of integrative social contract theory proposed by Donaldson and Dunfee. We suggest that urban prosperity initiatives present a mandate on corporations sufficiently strong as to qualify as an authentic norm. Further, we argue that strict adherence to a corporate bottom line approach or “corporate isolationism” is not congruent with contemporary community standards. Anita Cava is an Associate Professor of Business Law at the University of Miami’s School of Business Administration and serves as Co-Director of the University of Miami’s Ethics Programs, a university-wide entity that promotes research, teaching and service across the disciplines in areas of ethical interest and concern, and Director of Business Ethics Programs in the SBA. Professor Cava received her B.A. with Distinction from Swarthmore College and her J.D. from New York University School of Law, where she was a Hays Fellow. She joined the faculty after several years in private practice in Washington, D.C. and Miami. Her experience ranged from national employment cases to commercial and consumer litigation. Professor Cava’s teaching specialties are the legal environment of business and business ethics; here research interests concern legal and ethical aspects of healthcare administration, business ethics and employment issues. She has published in law reviews and business journals on such topics as “Advance Directives: Taking Control of End of Life Decisions,” “Law, Ethics and Management: Toward an Effective Audit” and “The Collision of Rights and s Search for Limits: Free Speech in the Academy and Freedom from Sexual Harassment of Campus”. Recipient of several School of Business Administration Excellence in Teaching Awards, Anita Cava was honored in 1996 by a University-wide Excellence in Teaching Award. She regularly teaches in UM’s well-known Executive MBA Program and has received Teaching Awards from these adult students as well. A frequent speaker on the topic of Business Ethics and Corporate Compliance, Professor Cava’s audiences have included community groups, management trainees, top executives of several corporations, the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce Goals Conference and Leadership Florida, among others. Don Mayer teaches ethics, legal environment of business, and environmental law at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. He is a full professor in the Department of Management and Marketing at the School of Business. He attended Duke University Law School (J.D., 1973) and Georgetown University Law Center (Master of International and Comparative Law, 1985) and practiced law in North Carolina from 1975–1990 after serving in the United States Air Force from 1973–75. He has taught as a visiting professor at the University of Michigan, California Polytechnic State University, and the University of Iowa. He has been at Oakland University since 1990 and served as Associate Dean in 2000 and 2001. Professor Mayer has published in related areas of international law, environmental law, and corporate ethics. Recent publication include “Fort’s ‘Business as Mediating Institution’-A Holistic View of Corporate Governance and Ethics,” in 41 American Business Law Journal (Summer 2004), “Yes! We Have No Bananas: Forum Non Conveniens and Corporate Evasion,” Academy of Legal Studies International Business Law Review, vol. 4, at 130 (2004), and “Corporate Governance in the Cause of Peace: An Environmental Perspective,” Vanderbilt Transnational Law Journal, Vol. 35, No. 2 (March 2002). An article on corporate free speech and the Nike v. Kasky case is forthcoming in the Business Ethics Quarterly.     

Corporate Social Strategy: Competing Views from Two Theories of the Firm

This paper compares two theories of the firm used to interpret firms’ corporate social strategies in order to derive new insights and questions in this research area. Researchers from many branches of strategic management agree that firms can strategically allocate resources in order to achieve both long-term social objectives and competitive advantage. However, despite some progress in investigating corporate social strategy, studies rely on fundamentally diverging theoretical approaches. This paper will identify, compare and begin to integrate two competing theories of the firm implicit in corporate social strategy scholarship: the resource-based and behavioural theories of the firm. I discuss the implications of these two theories for both researchers and practitioners on key debates within corporate social strategy, and conclude by suggesting several fruitful avenues for future research based on the emerging integration of these two theories of the firm within the strategy literature. Dr. Frances Bowen is an Associate Professor in the Strategy and Global Management Area of the Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary. Her main research interests cross strategy and organisational theory, focusing on corporate environmental strategy. She has examined firms’ enviromental decisions in a variety of complex decision-making contexts. Current and recent research projects have focused on the roles of subsidiary managers in encouraging environmental initiatives within multinational companies, and how firms might induce suppliers to participate in environmentally sound supply chain management. Her main theoretical interest is how the behavioural theory of the firm can be integrated with the resource-based view to better explain corporate environmental strategy.     

Introducing Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility at Undergraduate Level in the United Arab Emirates: An Experiential Exercise on Website Communication

In this article, we describe an assignment undertaken by our third-year students at a University Business School in the United Arab Emirates. The assignment serves to introduce corporate social responsibility and ethics in the undergraduate curriculum and to raise student awareness of how corporate activity together with corporate social responsibility can impact a country’s social, political, and cultural landscapes. We outline the assignment, student response to it, and its contribution to student intellectual development in terms of ethical perspective, philanthropy versus ethics, economic development, and cultural diversity. We discuss the implications of this learning experience for our students and their greater understanding of items within the United Arab Emirates government’s strategic directions, namely, creating a cohesive society and a sustainable environment.     

An Empirical Investigation of the Ethical Perceptions of Future Managers with a Special Emphasis on Gender – Turkish Case

This study presents an empirical investigation of the ethical perceptions of the future managers – Turkish university students majoring in the Business Administration and Industrial Engineering departments of selected public and private Turkish universities – with a special emphasis on gender. The perceptions of the university students pertaining to the business world, the behaviors of employees, and the factors leading to unethical behavior are analyzed. The statistically significant differences reveal that female students have more ethical perceptions about the Turkish business climate, behavior of employees, and the ethicalness of the behavior of the employees in comparison with their male counterparts. M.G. Serap Atakan is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Business Administration of Istanbul Bilgi University, Turkey. She is teaching and conducting researches on business ethics, corporate social responsibility and retailing. She has two co-authored articles published in the Journal of Business Ethics. Sebnem Burnaz is an Associate Professor of Marketing at Istanbul Technical University. She holds Ph.D. degree in management with major in marketing. Her teaching and research interests are in the field of Marketing, Retailing, Decision Making, and Business Ethics. She has published articles which have appeared in Advances in International Marketing, Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, Journal of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis. Y. Ilker Topcu is an Associate Professor of decision sciences in Istanbul Technical University. He has finished his Ph.D. studies in I.T.U., Faculty of Management. His teaching and research specialties are in the field of Operations Research/Management Science, Multiple Criteria Decision Making, Logistics, Transportation Planning, and Business Ethics. He has published papers which have appeared in Journal of the Operational Research Society, European Journal of Operational Research, Journal of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis, Journal of Global Optimization, Transportation Research Part A, Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems, Energy, and Building and Environment.     

Corporate Social Responsibility: A Comparative Analysis of Perceptions of Practicing Accountants and Accounting Students

The results of a survey of 272 practicing accountants and 374 accounting students enrolled in six universities are analyzed. Differences and similarities between the two groups with regard to their attitudes toward corporate social responsibility are examined. The results indicate that the students exhibit greater concern about the ethical and discretionary components of corporate responsibility and a weaker orientation toward economic performance. No significant differences between the two groups were observed with respect to the legal dimension of corporate social responsibility. Some explanations as well as limited generalizations and implications are developed. Nabil Ibrahim is the Grover Maxwell Professor of Business Administration at Augusta State University, Augusta, Georgia. He teaches courses in Strategic Management and Applied Statistics. Dr.Ibrahim’s articles have appeared in the Journal of Business Ethics, Health Care Management Review, the Journal of Applied Business Research, as well as many other journals and proceedings. John Angelidis is Professor and Chair, Department of Management, St. John’s University, New York, NY. He teaches courses in Strategic Management and International Business. Dr. Angelidis has published articles in the Journal of Business Ethics, Business Review, the International Journal of Commerce and Management as well as many other journals and proceedings. Donald P. Howard is an Associate Professor of Management at Augusta State University, Augusta, Georgia. He teaches courses in Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship. His articles have appeared in a number of journals such as the Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Applied Case Research, and Health Care Management Review, as well as many proceedings.     

Gratitudes and latitudes in M.B.A. attitudes: Customer orientation and theBusiness Week poll

A re-examination of the data on customer satisfaction with business schools reported byBusiness Week addresses questions concerning the manner in which student evaluations and recruiter assessment are weighted to determine results for the graduate and corporate polls, as well as how the latter two scores are combined to obtain the overall ranking. Further, as a measure of student satisfaction, the graduate poll holds considerable interest in its own right. Accordingly, an explanatory model based on various objective and quasi-objective measures is developed to account for the student evaluations. It is argued that — after taking account of the available predictors — the errors in this model (unexplained variance or residual terms) represent graduate gratitudes bestowed upon the various schools. It appears that these measures of student appreciation vary with certain geographical characteristics. In other words, the gratitudes expressed in MBA attitudes depend in part on variations in geographic populations, longitudes, and latitudes.The author thanks George Day, Don Lehmann, David Reibstein, and Alex Simonson for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. He also gratefully acknowledges the support of the Columbia Business School's Faculty Research Fund.     

Personal characteristics in college students' evaluations of business ethics and corporate social responsibility

A survey of 138 college students reveals an undergraduate major has a greater influence on corporate social responsibility than business ethics. Business students are no less ethical than nonbusiness students. Females are more ethical and socially responsible than males. Age is negatively related to one's Machiavellian orientation and positively related to negative attitudes about corporate efforts at social responsibility. The results suggest a greater need to focus busines ethics instruction based on student characteristics. Peter Arlow is Professor of Management at Youngstown State University, Youngstown, Ohio, U.S.A., where he teaches M.B.A. and undergraduate management courses. He has previously published in the Academy of Management Review, Business Horizons, International Journal of Management, Long-Range Planning, Journal of Business Ethics, Akron Business and Economic Review, and other Journals.     

Using Live Cases to Teach Ethics

This paper describes a live ethics case project that can be used to teach ethics in a broad variety of business classes. The live case differs from regular cases in that it involves a current situation. Students select an on-going or current event that involves ethical violations and write a case about it. They then present their case and run a debate about the challenges and issues outlined in the case and the actions that could have or should have been taken. The dynamic project fulfills the key criteria for effective ethics education since it increases awareness of the complexity of ethical challenges, allows application of concepts, creates a personal emotional engagement in the case, is relevant, holds students accountable for their position, and creates a setting that encourages students to think critically about ethics.Dr. Victoria McWilliams is Professor of Finance in the College of Commerce and Finance at Villanova University. Her areas of interest include pedagogical issues, as well as corporate governance and control. She has distinguished herself for her ability to provide high quality, innovative business education, and for her outstanding leadership achievements at various academic institutions.Dr. Afsaneh Nahavandi is a management faculty at the School of Global management and Leadership at Arizona State University’s West campus. Her areas of interest include leadership, teams, and culture. She has been director of the MBA program at the West campus of ASU, director of the University College, and associate dean of the ASU University College since July 2006.