51社区

• Embedding ethics, sustainability, and social responsibility into business education equips students to confront real-world challenges with purpose and integrity.
• Continuous assessment of curricular materials ensures that educational content remains relevant and reflects current ethical standards in business practices.
• Leadership and faculty should unify on the school’s approach to cultivating graduates with responsibility-centered mindsets.

Transcript

Margaret Chitiga-Mabugu: [00:15] Business schools' responsibility in shaping ethical and responsible leaders is immense because they are the leaders of the future.

[00:27] For example, at my university, we receive students coming directly from high school.

[00:32] They're undergraduate students and we have this responsibility—huge responsibility—but also opportunity, to shape their minds, to expose them to what is going on in the business sector, and then to discuss with them, to take them through what we think are some of the big challenges that are happening in the business sector.

[00:53] And then for them to provide feedback and understand their huge responsibility once they are no longer our graduates. We came up with actual modules that our students then take.

We [as educators] have this responsibility, but also opportunity, to shape their minds, to expose them to what is going on in the business sector.

[01:04] There, we're able to go into depth in understanding ethics, understanding morals, and understanding sustainability. We immerse them in businesses, we bring businesses to us, and we do lots of simulations with them.

[01:18] We have such innovative ways of teaching our students. We use artificial intelligence and understand its bright side, but also its unethical use sometimes.

[01:30] These additional modules give us much more room, much more space, so that our students can really delve deep into these particularly critical issues.

[01:43] We then group these sustainable development goals into what we call the five Ps: people, the planet, prosperity, peace, and partnerships. We show how these link within the 17 goals.

[01:58] And the students think, 'Oh, I never thought that a business has anything to do with that.' We show them how interconnected a business and an individual are to the rest of the world, the planet, and the big challenges we face.

We have to learn and collaborate as a faculty.

[02:13] Sustainability has everything to do with these big challenges. We say, but what do you think we should be doing?

[02:20] Where do we want the world? Where do you want to see yourselves in another 50 years? Suddenly, students become very interested, particularly those younger ones, and they realize this is about the long term, their future, and future generations.

[02:36] Teaching, educating, discussing, or changing minds is not something that is easy. I always say I was trained as an economist; I was not trained to teach moral mandates.

[02:48] We have to learn and collaborate as a faculty. That's the first thing for me, best practice, you must agree as a faculty and as an institution that this is what you want as an outcome for your students.

[03:02] For example, in the economic and management sciences, our mission drives everything we do. Our mission has a component that says we want students who can co-create value for society. And we emphasize this.

We need as many tools as possible to give students that moral muscle and strengthen that mindset.

[03:18] Best practice also includes integrating ethical discussions into the curriculum, ethical theories, and frameworks, must be discussed. Then, challenge the students to think about questioning theories and bridging that with practice.

[03:36] We bring in a lot of guests from industry, and we bring our students into industry as interns. We have work-integrated learning.

[03:47] They go to the industry for two or three months and return to us. We find that this really changes their perspectives about what they are learning, about what theory means in practice.

[03:58] We really tell them that we want to prepare them to have skills that they can use in the workplace, to argue a point, to point out when they see that this is morally wrong.

[04:11] And so, we need as many tools as possible to give them that muscle and strengthen that mindset.