Leadership, Policy, and Culture - Discussion

It starts with basic beliefs and values. It’s important to make clear to the people in the organization what those are, so you’re transparent. They have to be consistent with the values of the organization, or there will be a problem. If you look at all the issues that have happened in the corporate world of the last few years, . . . it all boils down to a basic lack of a moral compass and checks and balances among leaders. We as leaders have to check each other. We’re going to make mistakes. If we don’t check each other on them, you get in trouble. Most of the companies that got into trouble had a set of stated principles, but the leaders didn’t check each other on those principles.8

Principle boils down to a personal philosophy we all deal with at an individual level—choices involving honesty, integrity, ethical behavior. Indeed Exhibit 12.3, Global Strategy in Action, gives you the chance to “test” your personal principles in comparison with the actions of some of your business school peers at Duke University’s MBA program and at Centenary College’s China MBA program, along with BusinessWeek’s thoughts on the subject too. The key thing to remember as a future leader is that your personal philosophies, or choices, manifest themselves exponentially for you or any key leaders of any organization. The people who do the work of any organization watch their leaders and what their leaders do, sanction, or stand for. So do people outside that organization who deal with it. These people then reflect those principles in what they do or come to believe is the way to do things in or with that organization. An effective organization is better built—is stronger—when its leaders show by example what they want their people to do and the principles they want their people to operate by on a day-to-day basis and in making decisions shaped by values and principles—a clear sense of right or wrong. “Values,” “Lead by example,” “Do as I say AND as I do”—these are very basic notions that good leaders find great strength in using. BusinessWeek’s “The Ethics Guy” says simply that principles should boil down to “five easy principles,” which are:9

(Pearce 360-362)

Pearce, John, Richard Robinson. Strategic Management, 13th Edition. McGraw-Hill Learning Solutions, 2016-01-02. VitalBook file.

The citation provided is a guideline. Please check each citation for accuracy before use.

Exhibit 12.3: Global Strategy in Action: Test YOUR Principles

Just a few years ago, the dean of Duke’s Fuqua School of Business announced that 10 percent of its MBA class had been caught cheating on a take-home final exam and would be dismissed. These MBAs were “cream of the crop” students with six years of corporate experience and careers under way in the new “wiki” world of online collaboration and aggregation of others,’ knowledge via the Web as an emerging key source of competitive advantage. So they collaborated in crafting answers to the take-home final exam, sharing insights and ideas, and so forth. Their professors saw the similarity in answers, and, looking to evaluate individual performance, found the collaboration unethical, dishonest, lacking integrity, and fundamentally wrong. So they were dismissed for cheating.

Three years later, Centenary College, a small Hackettstown, New Jersey-based institution, ended its MBA program for Chinese-speaking students after finding “evidence of widespread plagiarism,” the school said in a statement posted on its Web site. The China MBA program was based in Beijing, Shanghai, and Taiwan. All 400 students were given the choice of accepting a tuition refund—as much as $1,400—or taking a comprehensive exam to earn a degree.*

According to the statement, all but two students decided to take a refund. The college also noted in the statement that students who cheat are ordinarily dismissed from the school, but the China MBA students are being given more leniency “in an effort to afford students every fair possibility.”*

A BusinessWeek Commentary took issue with the Duke decision—and saw a different interpretation. Their point: the new world order is about teamwork, shared information. Social networking, a new culture of shared information, postmodern learning wiki style. Text messaging, downloading essays, getting questions answered from others, often unknown, via the Web. All of these are the new ways we work today. We function in an interdependent world, where success often hinges on creative collaboration, networking, and “googling” to tap a literal world of information and expertise available at the click of a keyboard or a cell phone.

Others, starting with their Duke professors, viewed these students collaborating on a take-home exam as a conscious effort to break the rules, or at least, gain unauthorized advantage. And maybe, they apparently thought, this was a good situation about which to make an example in order to rein in an increasingly rudderless business culture.

What do you think? Is what these students did ethical, principled leadership? Is it “cheating,” or simply collaborative learning?

* Michelle Conlin, “Commentary: Cheating—or Postmodern Learning?” BusinessWeek, May 14, 2007; and Geoff Gloeckler, “MBA Program Withdraws from China due to ‘Widespread Plagiarism,’ Other Issues,” Bloomberg-Businessweek, www.businessweek.com, July 26, 2010.

(Pearce 362)

Pearce, John, Richard Robinson. Strategic Management, 13th Edition. McGraw-Hill Learning Solutions, 2016-01-02. VitalBook file.

The citation provided is a guideline. Please check each citation for accuracy before use.