Right vs. Right: Deliberating Ethics in Business
The Ethics in Business Forum at ISB was established by a few students from the PGP Class of 2013 who set out to create an awareness of corporate and individual responsibility while making business decisions through thought-provoking discussions on ethics, the motivation underlying unethical behaviour and the importance of an ethics education. In the past year, the forum achieved its objective; the campus reverberated with discussions on the grey area of ethics. Abhishek Hemrajani, the lead coordinator, writes about the forum and its activities.
Leadership development and ethical responsibility are the core objectives of ISB’s management programme, often incorporated as the learning objective of many courses. In the introduction to Business Ethics, a workshop on
Responsible Leadership conducted by Professor Abhijeet Vadera introduced concepts such as
The World is Flat and
Situational Constraints in being Responsible. Like many others, initially, I found the concepts obvious but a few case studies later I was not so sure: Are we always consciously aware of our ethical responsibilities in complex situations and of the repercussions of our actions? Morality apart, what role would rationality and fear play in our decision-making when we set out to make our mark in the real world? These reasons led to the founding of the Ethics in Business Forum.
The eight-member forum began its event calendar with a session on “Inciting Authenticity” by Rajiv C Lochan, retired Partner, McKinsey & Company. Lochan advocated the use of conversation and introspection as tools to find answers to questions on ethical leadership. He described the learning process as a knowledge staircase, where one has to climb steadily from being
unconsciously unskilled to becoming
unconsciously skilled. As the participants debated the real world
right vs. right dilemmas and wondered about the behavioural funnel - theory of awareness, judgment, and intention – we realised that the audience had already started reflecting on ethics.
Our second session, “The Dean’s Dilemmas,” provided an opportunity for the participants to debate the dilemmas faced by the School. Dean Ajit Rangnekar’s ability to openly discuss situations, seek feedback on his thought process, and his willingness to listen to students’ opinions helped establish the forum as a non-judgmental and a collaborative environment for developing leadership.
Sandeep Baldava, Partner and Head of Fraud Investigation and Dispute Services at Ernst & Young led our next session, “Understanding Corporate Frauds
.” Baldava spoke about the
fraud triangle of opportunity, pressure, and rationalisation, which states that a person under pressure when given an opportunity would rationalise and commit a fraud. This formed the basis of a discussion on the enabling conditions for fraud. Participants also realised that an education on ethics and sound moral behaviour would help address corruption in our society.
While it is still too early to quantify the impact that the forum has had on students and the development of their ethical ideology, we know that we have created an opportunity for individuals to engage in discussions and realise that everyone is susceptible to poor judgment and detrimental choices.