Business without ethics makes god out of greed

It was a question waiting to be raised. Whether or not a course on ethics needs to be included in the curriculum of B-Schools, was one of the most pertinent issues raised at the '8th AIMS international conference on management education in 2020 — Issues, challenges and opportunity' held at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA), on Saturday.

Besides the need for ethics education, the quality of education in management schools and which out of classroom training and self-learning is more important, were some of the other issues discussed at the meet.

The conference, which saw some 365 participants from across the globe in attendance, was inaugurated by commissioner of higher education for the Government of Gujarat, Jayanti Ravi, and IIMA director Samir Barua.

Chairperson for the conference, Dr OK Gupta and Prof SK Agarwal presided over the inaugural function.

Ravi, in her keynote address, elaborated on three aspects of management education: access, achievement and equity. She emphasized on the concept of 'multiversity'- that allows more than one university to grow with connection through internet.

"This will also help generate human and human-like professionals. A multiversity can have online human tutors, mentors or coaches. This can be accessed through mobiles and popular social networking sites," she said.

Prof Barua raised important issues in his speech, where he compared management students with the protagonist of the film The Wall Street - Bud Fox, who comes across the philosophy of 'Greed is God'.

Many management students are also falling prey to such philosophies, he said, adding that management schools need to work to avoid this. "Discussions have been taking place on whether ethics should be taught in management schools. People often say that ethics are ingrained in a person's upbringing, and that when they enter B-Schools, they're too old to be 'taught' ethics. However, others say that stand-alone courses on ethics should be compulsorily included in the curriculum," he said.

Barua also mentioned that at a time when some 2,000 management schools already exist in India, the announcement of an additional 18,000 seats across new AICTE-approved management colleges is something that needs consideration and a second thought.

He said that the main emphasis should be on the improvement of quality of education, better interaction between faculty and students, the quality of faculty and capacity building, among other things.