Ethics and the Meeting Industry
Uncover the latest trends in ethics circles with One+ editor Jason Hensel.
By Jason Hensel The latest financial crisis proved that the U.S. (among other countries) has a major business ethics problem. To help mitigate future financial freefalls due to dubious ethical decisions, business schools are beginning to incorporate ethics training in their MBA programs.
“At Dartmouth, the Tuck School of Business now has a mandatory ethics and social responsibility requirement,” reported David A. Kaplan for FORTUNE. “The New England College of Business and Finance offers an online master’s in ‘business ethics and compliance.’ New York University’s Stern School of Business added a class on policy responses to the financial crisis.”
Harvard’s MBA program in January will feature moral leadership, debt and real estate courses. “Curriculum is to learning as an organizational 
chart is to a company,” Harvard Dean Jay Light told Kaplan. “Learning has to do with what goes on inside the classroom.”
Curriculum at most professional schools, though, is a matter of pedagogical fashion, as well as student demand, Kaplan reports.
“After the rise of Michael Milken (Wharton MBA ‘70) and the fall of Enron (Jeffrey Skilling, Harvard MBA ‘79), there were predictable cries for more vigilance in the academy, as if the professoriate alone could curb hubris,” Kaplan wrote. “Elective courses in ethics, responsibility and moderation followed scandal-plagued eras. Maybe some of the customers paid some attention. Yet Light points out that in recent years attendance in Risk Management at [Harvard Business School] was so low the course was canceled.”
For the meeting and event industry, ethics have always been an issue. And in this economy, budget cuts and complimentary item requests, commission payments, vendor relationships, meeting points or rewards and other types of non-monetary gifts or items of value have raised and continue to raise concerns.
For more learning on ethics, read Kaplan’s full article at Money.cnn.com and attend MeetDifferent session “Ethics and the Meeting Industry: What is the biggest ethics problem facing meeting and event planners” with Kelly Bagnall, an attorney at Brown McCarroll L.L.P.