Getting My MBA at 48

Ethics

As I was reading my companies Code of Conduct, I had to think to myself that someone didn’t quite think about what they are writing.

Here is an example, I am not quoting just something I thought of afterward

Cannot use the name of said company for personal reasons. I guess that when I fill out that application for a Credit Card, or to buy a home and I get to the line that ask the name of my employer I can’t say unless I get approval first, Hmm makes you wonder. At where the lines of personal use are?

This is a the age of electronics, instant information and almost every mobile phone has some way to record data. So again makes you wonder about trade secrets and how easily information can be transfered. Even copyright laws are being stretched and misused on the internet and cell phones.

Just a few short years ago, none of this would have been possible. No one ever thought of blue-toothing information from one device to another let alone what blue-tooth was. Even texting for most older generations are now just begun to understand email and haven’t a clue how texting or Twitter works. For all trying to keep up with technology my daughter as smart as she is (way smarter than me by the way) can text with one hand if need be faster than I can talk.

So in this new age of electronic and instant information, company codes of conduct, and policies will have to evolve with with technology. Even though somethings like the basic ethics should remain unchanged.

We need a strong base to build on

Then we are selves need to be better policeman of our own selves, plus teaching, no instilling in our children the basics about what is right and what is wrong what is good and what is bad.

There is a group of students that are graduating from Harvard this year who have decided be their own conscious.

Who would have thought that M.B.A. students would voluntary take a pledge not to lie or steal, Leslie Wayne wrote a good article ” A Promise to be Ethical in an Era of Immorality” for the New York Times. About how students are driving the change not the schools.

Is it the lack of good old fashion bringing or just plain greed that has caused the wave of corporate upheaval which ever it is I am glad to see that some students have enough class and dignity to take the oath.

I for one would like to see all those Ivy League School lead the way in drafting a formal doctrine for all MBAs’ and that includes even my on-line University, Western Governors University or using the one that the Harvard students drafted “The M.B.A. Oath”

I believe that something like this has been long overdue, I would like to personally thank those students for doing this and now that the momentum has started let us not let it fail. It is up to all of us.

Tags: online university