Chapter 9

Recommendations for teaching human centered management

The quote from the 1985 business ethics workshop that was given in the previous chapter replicates what educators were concerned with when business ethics teaching was in its infancy. Here is another reference from that time (Harris et al. 1996, pp. 94 ff., quoting Callahan 1980):

Today, about 500 business schools in the US have executive training programs on business ethics. The scope of the training differs, and so does the content. Recent surveys show that the content on compliance seems to overwhelm, according to Ronald R. Sims, who has taught top-ranked executive education in the area of business ethics for many years in the Raymond A. Mason School of Business at the College of William and Mary in Virginia (Sims 2017). Compliance is mainly a technical concept, and this type of knowledge must indeed be taught. But there should as well be an emphasis on educating the whole person. This holistic approach would have to be similar to the one described in the introduction of this book when referring to the building blocks for multi-stakeholder dialogues (section 1.2.2). Based on that approach, the recommendations for educational programs are as follows.

9.1 A principles-based education on business ethics

Holistic training programs should integrate the views on personal and interpersonal goals, societal objectives and the elements of the sustainable development. The training must not be isolated or focus only on techniques. It must be connected to a principle-driven and value-creating culture. A holistic view of education requires an encompassing view that integrates multiple layers of meanings and experiences to help learners recognize their mental models and the paradigm shift from a mechanistic mindset to a dynamic perspective. “It is through mental models that we interpret and make sense of the world around us, and in business and social systems mental models shape decisions and actions” (Morecroft 2004, p. 104). The more powerful the mental models the easier it is for managers to understand changes in the external environment to improve decision-making strategies. Mental models can be included in these five learning objectives (see Khan 2010):

1. 1 Learning core values in global ethics
2. 2 Critical ethical executive thinking
3. 3 Interdisciplinary and intercultural thinking
4. 4 Oral rhetorical communication for ethical management
5. 5 Business writing across the globe using technology and information literacy conforming to global business ethics.

Principles-based education will connect all this to basic standards of thought for which it may suffice here to transcribe the Caux Round Table principles for human centered management (see Table 2.1):

• Respect for all stakeholders, including nature
• Sincerity, candor, truthfulness
• Abiding by rules, abstaining from and eliminating illicit operations
• Contributing to justice and social development
• Promoting free trade.

Notwithstanding the focus on the global perspective, educational institutions, by nature, will have to take into account the country where they are headquartered and the type of executive they educate. There are major differences between Europe and the US, to consider just the two areas, in the practical implementation of what is taught. In most European countries, there is quite a dense network of regulation on most of the ethically important issues for business. Workers’ rights, social and medical care, and environmental issues are only a few examples where European companies have traditionally not had to consider what should guide their decisions because most of this has been tackled by the government in setting up a tight institutional framework for businesses. Examples range from the Scandinavian welfare state, to the German co-habitation system and the strong position of trade unions and workers’ rights in France. In Europe, governments, trade unions and corporate associations have therefore been key actors in ethical themes. By contrast, in most of these areas, US official institutions do not regulate these themes and so the key actor has tended to be the corporation. Table 9.1 gives a comprehensive view of the key actors in both regions.

Table 9.1 Key actors in business ethics

	US	Europe
Who is responsible for ethical conduct in business?	The individual	Social control by the collective
Who is the key actor in business ethics?	The corporation	Government, trade unions, corporate associations
What are the key guidelines for ethical behavior?	Corporate codes of ethics	Negotiated legal framework of business
What are the key issues in business ethics?	Misconduct and immorality in single decision situations	Social issues in organizing the framework of business

Source: Adapted from Crane and Matten (2004), p. 320

These differences must be taken into account when viewing the following examples for curricula, which the author thinks correspond to the recommendations on principles-based education for human centered management.

9.2 Two sets of exemplary business ethics curricula

The first set is an enumeration of learning objectives found in the English language versions of the websites of two German executive education institutions, Wissenschaftliche Hochschule für Unternehmensführung (WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management; www.whu.edu) and Wittenberg Center for Global Ethics (WCGE; www.wcge.org).

WHU lists the following key objectives:

• Provide an engaging journey of learning, combining theory with practice
• Understand how the view on emerging markets has changed
• Analyze current challenges and opportunities of emerging markets
• Explore links between strategy, leadership and innovation
• Promote awareness on cultural differences and need to internationalize
• Develop and leverage personal networks and engage in trusting dialogue
• Reflect on the challenges that lie ahead and own role of leadership.

WCGE posts the following on its English website:

• An introduction to the principles of global ethics and value-oriented management
• Knowledge and tools which help to identify and analyze ethical challenges
• (Reflective competences), to develop solutions (constructive competencies) and to communicate these approaches (communication competencies).

The focus is on these topics:

• The basics of ethics – the moral quality of market economy – corporations and their responsibilities – the management of values – applied ethics in management practice.

The second set of examples presents content for regular curriculum courses in two German business schools (English version of their websites):

The Frankfurt School of Finance and Management (www.frankfurt-school.de) offers two modules: “Leading Intercultural Teams” and “People Working Across Boundaries” with the following contents:

• Motivation, trust, relationship-building, networking
• Developing awareness of critical situations
• Extrapolating beliefs, views and values
• Cross-cultural understanding of each team member
• Leadership – leading virtual teams:
• What do your team members expect and what kind of support do they need?
• Organizational and international diversity
• Developing individual and team goals
• Appropriate use of technology: “connecting” rather than “disconnecting.”

And the European School of Management and Technology, Berlin (www.esmt.org) displays a module on “Integrative Leadership in Action” where the content is:

• Leaders, leadership, and followers
• Leading organizations through change
• Ethical dilemmas in leadership
• Corporate governance
• Managing across cultures
• Executive careers and transitions
• Leading and reinventing yourself
• Managing your back-to-the-job agenda
• Executive communication.

Other examples can be found in some other business schools or executive education institutions throughout the world. But not all of them list program contents in their websites or offer English versions. They obviously expect prospective students to trust the reputation of a highly renowned institution or to request detailed information directly. Another aspect, which may explain why large executive education institutions in the US expect participants or their organizations to first establish contact with the institution and request information, is that often executives must have a needs assessment or “philosophical coaching” to understand and capture the importance of principles-based “soft skills” training.

The two topics of leadership and morality have to be taught together as they have to be applied together in real life. There is an extensive body of published thought that examines the topics separately. The literature presumes that managers, leaders and organizations need one topic as much as the other and so would their stakeholders. Some writings raise the expectation that ethics and morality are instrumental in leading to a more profitable enterprise, and it helps organizations to stay out of trouble. Leadership writing is often more centered on accomplishing organizational objectives through people and teams, with the emphasis more on techniques and outcomes. Carroll (2003), examining the major articles of the 1990s and the early 2000s, found out that most of their authors pay little attention to the moral dimension of leadership. Only more recently, Carroll says, have the topics and literatures of ethics/morality and leadership begun to be integrated. It is hoped, then, that this book makes a difference.

9.3 Six teaching blocks

A considerable amount of higher education management programs advertises and claims to integrate moral, social and ecological contents into their curriculums. Some scholars express hope that this will help to eradicate greedy and unethically business practices (Wankel and Stachowitz-Stanusch 2011); it is therefore in the interest of scholars and practitioners alike to further improve this perspective of management education and training programs. The view that ethical leadership pays off in the long run is not new: A 1963 OECD publication quotes John Ulric Nef, co-founder of the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought, saying: “The future of industrial civilization in the decades and centuries which lie ahead of us is likely to depend less on the scientist, the engineers and the economists, than upon a renewal of the search for the perfection of the human personality” (OECD 2013). Half a century later, and after a series of economic crises partially attributed to opportunistic behaviors and unethical leadership, it looks like we still have lessons to learn. What learners need is teaching content that connects their experience and expectations. The purpose of this final section is to show avenues for conceptualizing content that has a nexus to practice.

As criticism on business education often highlights what is missing, but fails to offer constructive ideas for improvement, practitioners turn away from training programs when they find them to be overburdened with triviality or pure philosophy. They look for practical application which can solve the problems that business executives face daily. The proposal set forth in the following sections exhibits a Teaching Blocks construct directed to balance reflective, self-aware and practice-based learning which should help executive program faculty and executive program participants to advance social transformation in organizations and contribute to the common good.

The Teaching Blocks are grounded on functional aspects of management and relate each topic to experiences which most executives have encountered in their careers. The respective teaching contents are destined to

• Foster ethical leadership associated with accountability
• Guide leaders and the people they supervise to achieve job satisfaction and high performance as individuals, teams and organizations.

Leadership always pursues predictable or expected outcomes. So, the question about “what and how to teach” in an executive or leadership course or program inevitably connects ethical principles with organizational performance. Consequently, each of the six Teaching Blocks (TBs) described next connects to practical aspects of business. They show how strengthening human centered management produces perceptible outcomes:

1. 1 Capacity building: What do executives consider to be leadership capacity?
2. 2 The “moral market” axiom: Does the free market system corrode or construct moral character?
3. 3 Systems thinking and cause–effect relationships: Are there (tangible) benefits from morality?
4. 4 Ethical leadership impact on business processes: Does morality improve efficiency?
5. 5 The role model perspective: Is there a visible effect of ethical behavior on the workplace and beyond?
6. 6 Ethical stakeholder-relationship management: Can human centered management transcend to all the organization’s constituencies and the external social environment?

TB 1. Capacity building

There is continuous debate whether a person’s attitudes and values change learning new things. Even though obtaining insight in issues of morality and ethics goes beyond simple learning, the question remains if ethical judgment can be affected by a business course or the faculty/instructors who teach it. Some studies give an affirmative response (Glenn 1992; Desplaces et al. 2007; Jones 2009). And when research claims (e.g., Bass 1999) that leaders can inspire followers to change perceptions and motivations, this indicates that leadership values can therefore be taught and learned.

A survey conducted by Ahn, Ettner, and Loupin (2012) among senior executives in business, non-profit and government uncovered the following eight value-driven determinants of leadership in order of importance:

• Integrity (adherence to moral and ethical codes)
• Good judgment (flexibility and situation awareness)
• Leadership by example (collective actions, decisions, general behavior)
• Ethical decision-making (adherence to the principle of “do no harm”)
• Trust (reliance between leader and followers)
• Justice/fairness (impartiality and equal treatment)
• Humility (lack of arrogance, capacity to listen carefully, understand deeply)
• Sense of urgency (immediacy, action orientation to achieve results).

The results of the survey are shown in Exhibit 9.1.

The graph shows that Integrity is valued highest among this group of executives, followed by Good judgment and Leadership by example, while Sense of urgency and Humility are ranked lowest. Although it would be provocative to debate these findings, there is almost consensus that leaders need to have the right combination of patience and impatience (Ahn, Ettner, and Loupin 2012, p. 124). And with respect to Humility, it is apparent that a leader needs to live through an ordeal first to grasp its meaning and learn a lesson. Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of General Electric, has said that instead of blaming economic conditions for poor performance during the 2008 crisis, it was indeed the crisis that made General Electric stronger: I am “humbler and hungrier because after the crisis I learned I need to be a better listener. It would have helped me very much to anticipate the radical changes that occurred” (Glader 2009, p. B2). Immelt’s lesson in humility validates leaders’ needs to cope with contingencies in a way that puts accomplishments and talents in proper perspective to enhance authenticity and credibility (Van Dierendonck 2011; Kanungo 2001).

When there is a consensus on the ingredients of moral capacity, and when managers can be taught to reflect these with their own (moral) behavior, will this eliminate management anomalies, like fraud, conspiracy, negligence and disrespect? It obviously does not suffice. So, having some moral managers in the market is not enough; it is the market that needs to be moral. The moral market construct (Boatright 1999; Smith 2005) is inextricably linked to human centered management, and the assumption is growing increasingly strong that this lies at the center of potential solutions in the 21st century.

TB 2. Connecting individual capacity to the theory of “moral markets”

The “moral market” construct (Boatright 1999) focuses on economic mechanisms that advance ethical ends that deter and punish immoral behavior. The axiom states clearly that the main objective of markets and competition is to serve human beings. And this is the morale of “doing good”: competition and markets guarantee and enhance opportunities for all individuals to attain a better life, and everybody is free to choose which opportunity to pursue. This freedom of choice explains what buyers prefer, which provides a feedback to the producers. A market, thus, corrects itself and, in its purest manifestation, should not give room to lawfulness or immorality. But there is the counter-argument that competitive markets reward selfishness instead of cooperative activity (Hart 2010). The answer lies in the concept of freedom: freedom allows for human imperfections, and markets are human communities. Illegal activities do happen in market societies when opportunistic people and leaders choose short-sighted, self-serving decisions, instead of long-term social solutions.

But when the question arises if free markets corrode moral character, as the Templeton Foundation did (Bogle 2008), it is too nearsighted to accept for an answer what Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz has stated: “the market may result in a distribution of income that does not comport with any system of social justice” (Stiglitz 2007, p. 487). The proper answer would be that the incompatibility of profits and social justice is not the cause of social injustice, but a corollary: business history shows that corporate managers who have hold control of giant publicly held business enterprises – without holding significant ownership stakes – were lured into all sorts of aberrations hindering their companies (from Enron to WorldCom to Siemens, etc.). But the economic and business landscape is not dominated by these irresponsible few. The system is led by leaders who, while pursuing a reasonable self-interest, exhibit distinguished positive character traits of prudence, initiative and self-reliance to advance the interests of their corporations aligned with the well-being of the local and global community (Bogle 2008). And the corrective system, at the end, worked to expectations. The then culprits of Enron, WorldCom, and Siemens were punished and no longer lead these corporations. From there we get to TB 3, the cause–effect relations.

TB 3. Systems thinking and cause–effect relationships

Human centered managers should learn to identify, assess, diagnose and analyze ethical issues. This type of analysis implies and reveals that morally enhanced attitudes increase the validity of business decisions and consequences. Any experienced manager will have learned that trust and reciprocity yield benefits and that openness produces more success than the withholding of information. This applies to tangible effects like smooth course of action in a supply chain (Capó-Vicedo, Mula, and Capó 2011) or when developing new products in distributive collaboration (Wang 2013), but there are also soft outcomes in cause–effect relations. Brown and Treviño (2006) identify soft outcomes as effects that cannot easily be measured in ethical leadership. These authors identify the following four types of soft outcome in their study:

• Ethical decision-making of leader’s followers
• Level of satisfaction, motivation and commitment of leader’s followers
• Prosocial behavior (going above and beyond the call of duty)
• Counterproductive behavior (a negative correlation).

The study is based on a multi-sample field survey by Turner et al. (2002), and the results show that persons with higher levels of moral reasoning are more likely to influence their followers to make decisions based on moral principles, demonstrate more concern for the rights of others, and value fairness. A corrective effect has also been reported. Employees’ behavior that is harmful to the organization or to other employees decreases when ethical leaders clearly communicate performance expectations and standards of appropriate conduct and spell out consequences associated with rule violations (Brown and Treviño 2006, p. 607).

Contradictory results also exist. Abusive supervision using power and authority to humiliate, ridicule, and mistreat subordinates decreases social-citizenship behavior (Zellars, Tepper, and Duffy 2002) perpetuates detrimental behavior that induces retaliation and aggression (Mitchell and Ambrose 2007). A deeper analysis exhibits a two step-relation: an intangible input (abusive supervision), an intangible outcome (counterproductive behavior) and tangibly deficient organization performance. Twofold cause–effect relations like this require systems thinking.

Cause–effect relations and systems thinking can be taught more effectively when showing that managers often deal with issues where merely solving a problem does not improve the situation and they need to learn to see behind the problem, why it evolved and how it is connected to other issues (Heracleous and Rao 2008). Systems thinking, here, helps to solve interconnected issues through analyzing one by one in isolation. So, for instance, a manager can become aware that customer satisfaction, employee capacity, and competitive technologies are entwined with each other. But from the logic of division of work, solutions for each of these different issues may not be closely intertwined. In systems thinking, the three issues would be viewed as complements that are constitutive to the system of a business operation.

TB 4. The process perspective

M. L. Emiliani, a management educator of Central Connecticut University, assesses that “As educators, we should teach students that improvement is a human centered activity, and it is impossible to innovate and improve processes when managers penalize employees trying new ideas that have potential to fail” (Emiliani 2006, p. 370). Practitioners would translate this into the many cases where abusive supervision, jealous bosses, lack of understanding and the inability to listen to employees cause significant damage to business processes. In opposition, teamwork and the ability to collaborate in a frank and non-opportunistic way is more important to innovation than individual talent and boosts employees’ performance and loyalty (Subramaniam and Youndt 2005; Burt and Ronchi 2007).

A 2005 McKinsey report indicates that while companies with high collaborative management achieve superior financial performance, only 25% of senior executives described their organizations as effective at sharing knowledge across boundaries. But nearly 80% acknowledged that collaboration was crucial to growth (McKinsey 2005). An update of this report, five years later, found that management still relies on a few of the same strategies to improve: organization restructuring, business-process reengineering, cross-unit incentives, teamwork training. Despite evidence that many fail because they generate unintended consequences or overlook underlying issues that provide formidable obstacles for people to change behavior and advance (Aiken et al. 2009).

A critical issue is effective collaboration. Collaboration is based on a common purpose that also requires common trust. And instigating trust is a most critical leadership task. There is much research on trust in leadership (Yang and Mossholder 2010; Norman, Avolio, and Luthans 2010), but there is much less research and literature on how ethical leaders ensure that trust prevails in their organizations and among their followers (van den Akker et al. 2009). Tschannen-Moran (2004) identifies five dimensions of trust that support trustworthiness in the workplace:

• Benevolence (I convey my knowledge to you without expecting a reward)
• Honesty (I fully share my ideas with you)
• Openness (I do not have second thoughts)
• Reliability (I will be around when needed)
• Competence (I make sure that my abilities are state-of-the-art).

Ethical practitioners consent that these five dimensions are the roots of “real” trust (Kyte 2007). Collaborating trustfully in the weave of a firm’s business processes stimulates the learning process for all the people involved. Collective learning is a natural part of organizational development, but it only works the full through human centered management. Selfishness in this regard sooner or later leads to organizational atrophy with heavy costs for all the people involved.

Even the toughest managers recognize that trust, collaboration and social learning produce useful outcomes. And managers are becoming increasingly concerned when they realize through facts that in the long run there is no useful outcome if they do not set an example.

TB 5. The role model perspective and the “common good”

The process perspective shows that employees, who have a clear perception of their leaders’ ethical performance, outline their work context more effectively and deploy behaviors transferred from their leaders such as fair treatment, shared values and integrity in personnel and business transactions. There are many critical statements which say that self-interest rules over altruism. But ignoring the importance of human centered behavior on an organization’s performance and outcome (as well as on the structure of markets) runs against the reliability and validity of any unbiased analysis.

The encyclical Caritas in Veritate by Pope Benedict XVI explains it this way: “Ethics is deeply integrated into the structure of entrepreneurial and managerial actions such that any attempt at arriving at decisions on merely ‘technical’ grounds fail” (Grassl and Habisch 2011, p. 44). This statement does not imply that an enterprise should not strive for effectiveness, but that it will never succeed if it is merely technically effective. Technical effectiveness relies on collaboration and teamwork in organizations, with leaders setting role model examples. And it is their duty to counter moral muteness through what may be called “good conversation” (Sims, Brinkmann and Sauser 2016, p. 47). This would as well radiate beyond an organization’s boundaries to reach the domain of what is called the common good.

The common good of society is the referential value for all businesses and all government undertakings (Mahon and McGowan 1991). It is a classical humanistic concept in the Aristotelian tradition and Medieval Scholastics, philosophically embedded in natural law theory and assumed into Catholic social thought as a key reference for business ethics (Garriga and Melé 2004). A society attains the common good when its members interiorize the four fundaments of Aristotelian humanism (Wicker 1973):

• Prudence and wisdom, using good judgment, taking counsel.
• Fortitude and courage, perseverance and persistence for “noble” causes.
• Temperance and moderation, humility, acknowledging own limitations.
• Justice and fairness, unselfishness.

All these are entrenched in the leadership capabilities as identified in TB 1.

Another term included in the humanistic perspective is universal. In the context of globalization, some critics raise the question if humanism is a universal concept. The answer is that humanism has always been valued worldwide, in both its demeanors of being human centered and of dogma-free reasoning (Kudishina 2005). It expands across developed and developing nations. In sub-Saharan Africa, “Swahili humanism” is embedded in the notion of “utu,” which means “putting moral knowledge in action” (Kresse 2007, p. 168). In East Asia, it is rooted in Confucian philosophy, principles and values (Wei-Ming. (2008). And even though it is sometimes said that forms of life based on Confucian ethics are different from Western values, its emphasis on humanity, rightness, propriety, wisdom, filial piety and loyalty, stemming from communalism rather than individualism (Pye 1988), are increasingly in sync with Aristotelian and Western values.

TB 6. The stakeholder relation perspective

Human centered management is displayed through interactions inside and outside the corporation. Therefore, it is as important in management that the relationships of corporate managers extend to a multitude of stakeholders. Managers are expected to be accountable to shareholders, but also to all the people in the community who are or will be impacted, directly or indirectly, by corporative decision and business operations, whether economic, environmental or social in nature.

This dimension has a systems perspective, meaning that an impact affecting one stakeholder group also affects all stakeholders at the same or at different levels. There is a growing body of evidence in business literature that demonstrates positive and instrumental links between corporate social performance and financial performance (Freeman 2004; Maak and Pless 2006; Valentine 2014), and this naturally includes effects on stakeholders. And the way to achieve stakeholder value is managing with integrity, and making profits with principles.

The concept “profits with principles” was coined by Body Shop founder Anita Roddick (Maak and Pless 2006, p. 100), based on awareness that a significant part of her business success originated in managing stakeholder relations ethically and prudently (Roddick 1991). Her design was taken by the Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative at Harvard Business School. The Harvard concept of “Profits with Principles – Delivering Value with Values” (Jackson and Nelson 2004) places shareholder and social value-added in relation with each other and the creation of social value at par with shareholder value. For both, an organization needs to develop processes, products and services that meet customer requirements and societal requirements, to be compliant to all rules and regulations, to carefully control costs, risks, liabilities and impacts, and to give back to the communities in its environment through community investment and transparent communication.

Building sustainable stakeholder relations, beyond the ethical foundation, requires legitimacy. And legitimacy is rooted in a moral conception. There are several typologies of legitimacy in the literature (e.g., Suchman 1995), including regulative (compliance with laws and regulations) and organizational (conferred to an institution from outside stakeholders).

Leaders can build a legitimacy reservoir through effective communications with the organization’s social surroundings, like customers, suppliers, joint venture partners, banks and other organizations in the local, national and international community. A critical consideration for successful stakeholder management is a clear philosophical conception that combines ethical, economic and social considerations.

The six teaching blocks presented in this section aim at meeting the demands of practitioners who wish to delve into clear-cut essentials, and to academics who wish to learn the concerns of practitioners.

A comparison may help here. There is a great book by Louis Coutts titled The Six Hour MBA (2013). He does not propose to substitute a regular MBA course by one that lasts only six hours. His intent is to demystify management. In a similar fashion, the six TBs demystify the philosophical content of ethics by exploring morality, which is a basic human (and not a metaphysical) concern, in the context of business concerns. Practitioners will find this more understandable than a theoretical treatise, and it should help them to perceive how issues of responsible leadership are deeply engrained in any business.

Teaching or putting business ethics education into practice cannot be exclusively based on case studies. Effective deployment must be complementary, “moving towards the grounded theory approach” (Maital, Prakhya, and Seshadri 2008). That means, begin with a problem, issue or challenge (a “case”), then avoid jumping to data analysis and solution directly (“action strategies”), but systematically seek causal conditions, context, conditions and consequences in order to understand the process and arrive at the desirable outcome. The six TBs guide faculty and students in this “complementary” direction.

The approach of our six TBs connects to the fundamental human centered principle that the purpose of the firm is not solely to maximize stockholders’ wealth; they must deploy their power in a socially responsible manner to line up the competing interests of all stakeholders. This is an equally important responsibility. It has become an adopted position among business leaders that contributing to the well-being of the people in the local, national and global constituencies of their firm will produce a benefit to the firm and its shareholders as well. So, leaders must make their decisions in a way that aligns the complementary and also the competing interests of all stakeholders. Similarly, executive education program providers worldwide need to abide by the same principles.

Advocates of the human centered fundamentals mentioned earlier are increasingly shaping business school curricula and executive education worldwide. Among other agencies, there are the UN Global Compact, the Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative (GLRI), the World Business Council on Sustainable Development (WBCSD), the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) and the Academy of Business in Society (ABIS Global). The AACSB (American Association of Collegiate Schools of Business), founded in 1916, has expanded rapidly worldwide after 1997, when it accredited the first foreign business school in a French university. Today, this Tampa, Florida-based accrediting agency of the largest global business schools has accredited over 1,400 business programs in 87 countries, and it is requiring business programs to address ethics in business to attain accreditation. And likewise, this is done by EQUIS (European Quality Improvement System for Universities) and AMBA (the Association of MBAs).

Both for university-based executive education programs and for executive training taking place inside business corporations (which are approximately 50% of the total and growing fast; see Thomas and Wilson 2013), the question remains, with regard to an ethics content, not too much now about “Why,” but about “What” and “How.” Still, there are always some who argue that “the notion of a socially responsible corporation is an oxymoron because of the conflicted nature of the interests of stakeholders in a corporation” (Littrell 2011, p. 63). But if top management takes up the competing interests of all stakeholders in an ethical fashion to decipher conflicts, then solving these conflicts simply becomes a routine. For this, top management must take up the obligation to train ethical leadership at all levels. In the essence, the “What” and “How” is about teaching human centered management: The simple nexus is that complementing economic profits with people and process improvement has become a necessary condition to rebuilding the basis of corporate business performance (Locke 2013).

Well-trained leaders, who practice what they talk, can revert the notion that business activities always have a private return that is much higher than the perceive social return. This is necessary because business companies contribute substantially to progress, and today it is unequivocal that the only way to achieve this is with ethical leadership. Jordi Canals, one of the prominent proponents of executive education (Canals 2010, p. ix) expresses it this way: “There is a widespread belief that the quality of business leadership can be improved … [and that] the sound ethical principles that once were replaced by sheer opportunism and self-interest must return to the boardrooms.”