Honest Business: An Oxymoron?

“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.” Socrates

I once had a business student plagiarize a paper about ethics. Think about it. When I confronted him, his excuse was, “I didn’t know what ethics was.” I thought that was pretty obvious. Therefore, I wasn’t surprised to read that MBA students were the most likely of all graduate students to cheat in class. The survey, conducted by the Academy of Management Learning & Education found that 56 percent of graduate business school students cheated last year, compared to a mere (?) 47 percent of other graduate school students. These are our leaders of tomorrow.

The result of this lack of integrity and, in some cases, common sense is apparent in the recent list of 101 Dumbest Moments from Business compiled by Business 2.0 magazine. My personal favorite is #11, the Starbucks email coupon fiasco.

©2007 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved