21-01-2013, 03:28 PM
Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) initiative, United Nations Global Compact
Principles for Responsible.pdf (Size: 1.88 MB / Downloads: 95)
Overview
The Problem
Concerns about high levels of corruption and a lack of public and private sector transparency and accountability continue to dominate both public and private sector agendas. These issues are seen as major contributors to the global financial crisis that we are experiencing, and the impact has been demonstrated by various high profile major company ethical failures.
At academic and practice levels, two global anti-corruption and transparency trends are emerging. First, management is gaining recognition as a profession that has generally accepted standards of admission and appropriate conduct. As this consensus develops, business practice will increasingly be governed by ethical principles to which practitioners are expected to adhere (see for example, the Harvard Business School MBA Oath). Second, there is a shift in the prevention, detection, and enforcement burdens from government to business enterprise brought about by the privatization of norm-making first promulgated by the United States Federal Sentencing Guidelines through governmental incentives. Variations of this approach are now pursued in such diverse jurisdictions as Australia, Italy, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Canada, South Africa and Korea.1
PRME’s Solution
The mission of the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) initiative is to inspire and champion responsible management education, research and thought leadership globally. The primary objective of the PRME working group on anti-corruption is to develop a toolkit for use by business schools to design or adapt anti-corruption modules, or to integrate anti-corruption content with existing curricula, with specific reference to MBA programs.
A free-standing course is vital to the successful integration of anti-corruption topics into the management curriculum. Fifteen to twenty years ago, when business ethics was emerging as a credible discipline and one to which students should be exposed, the initial method (where it could be found) was to discuss the ethical dimensions of issues that arose in existing subjects.
Resources and Institutional Capabilities
The PRME Working Group on Anti-Corruption was created at the end of 2008 by a group of business schools committed to integrated issues raised by the UN Global Compact Tenth Anti‐Corruption Principle into the business curriculum. Today, within the broader framework of PRME, the group involves over 30 academic institutions and its work is divided among core discipline subgroups (economics, ethics, law, management, behavior, politics) to develop a ten module management education curriculum that relies on the core disciplines for: (1) core concept readings; (2) case studies; (3) primary source documents; and (4) scenarios for class discussion. Each of the modules also includes suggested study questions for classroom discussion. Instructors worldwide will select readings and questions from these recommended texts and questions. The curriculum is designed to be flexible. Instructors can select elements from the resources identified and integrate them into their own courses. In a crossover section at the end of the toolkit, teaching methods suggestions are offered that can be utilized in a variety of different cultural environments and classroom settings.
Deliverables
The Curriculum/Toolkit The curriculum utilizes a mix of core concept readings (e.g., Linda N. Edwards & Franklin Edwards, Economic Theories of Regulation: Normative vs. Positive), detailed case discussion (e.g., Weighing the Trade-Offs in the Goldman Settlement), primary sources and documents (Transparency International (2008), Business Principles for Countering Bribery: Small and Medium Enterprise, (SME Edition) and scenarios devised for class discussion which rely on Socratic and Case Method teaching to discuss core concepts, methods and problems. Each of the ten study modules includes a long list of these resources to allow faculty of different countries to design a course that is appropriately suited to the necessities of his/her students.
How to Use this Toolkit
The basic idea of this Toolkit is to present a buffet of ideas and resources on how you can take education on anti-corruption to the next level. We present both, up-to-date content in a comprehensive way as well as support for the delivery in the classroom. You as faculty can choose those elements deemed most useful in revising your curriculum. The list of content, the provided search function and compiled index will help you complement your course with additional topics or alternatively design a new stand-alone course. The up-to-date overview of content can serve as a point of orientation what topics currently characterize the international anti-corruption debate. All of the corresponding chapters outline why they are important, what learning goals and questions could be defined, what literature, cases and dilemmas for practicing exist.
We also added a section on learning methodologies to reflect if any of the presented ideas could enhance the learning experience in your class or institution. Not all ideas would work in all settings or represent true innovations. Their aim is merely to inspire and encourage further progress when delivering modules. Course participants surely note the additional efforts as well as the professionally compiled course design. Faculty members at top institutions spend, as a rule of thumb, about three hours on the preparation of every hour taught. Furthermore, we added a FAQ as well as index section for your convenient search for concepts. We hope to help you make these preparations more efficient and effective with this Toolkit.