The Business Ethics Blog

Here’s an interesting blog entry, by by Claudio Fernández-Aráoz for Harvard Business School:
Make Ethics a B-School Admissions Requirement.
Here’s the key paragraph:

In order to assure that the people they line up for positions of power do good for all stakeholders, business schools should drastically revamp their admissions processes. Schools should make sure that they admit a larger proportion of individuals with the right values in the first place. In my book, a demonstration of ethical values is more important than brilliant academic and even professional credentials. (Applicants come in with their values pretty fixed. You can’t hope to change people’s values by the time they reach graduate school, even if you can inspire them to reach for excellence.) Admissions committees should check to see whether applicants have in the past demonstrated altruistic values in practice – on the job, in their personal activities, in contributions to valuable social causes, and in community service. In order to correctly assess this evidence, proper interviews and reference checks should be a must before any final admission decision

Good idea in principle. And I can see the value of a certain amount of background-checking. A history of malfeasance — illegal activities, or ethical breaches such as plagiarism — could well be good grounds for denying someone admission. But I’m skeptical beyond that. But looking for candidates who have “demonstrated altruistic values in practice” is probably a bad idea. First, the goal of business isn’t (typically) altruism. Being altruistic isn’t a prerequisite for being a good manager. What you really want is things like:

• Respect for the law (both the letter and the spirit).
• Ability to work cooperatively.
• Dedication to the idea of not using anti-social methods (e.g., fraud & deception) in pursuit of profits.

Ask yourself: how much can you really tell from a candidate’s record of “altruism?” What are you going to look for? Volunteer work? Lots of people do volunteer work for lots of reasons, not all of them noble. That’s not to deny the enormous contribution that volunteers make, in all kinds of organizations. It’s just to say that a history of altruism isn’t a reliable indicator of ethics.

Finally, what kinds of altruism are going to count? Large charitable donations? That signals wealth at least as much as it signals ethics. How about volunteer work for your least-favourite charitable organization? Will work for organizations on both sides of the abortion debate count as signals of ethics? Or the same-sex marriage debate? Or gun control? Or healthcare reform?

Before you sign on to the idea of screening for ethics, make sure you’re comfortable with the idea of someone other than you deciding what counts as ethical.