The axiom that the education at Ivy league schools like IITs,IIMs ensure ethical behaviour by the students. Anybody who fails to meet this high-bar in personal life is a "blot" on his/her alma mater.
The unsaid corollary being, if you are not from a top-notch school, ethical behaviour is not such a hard requirement. Anyway, the papers print the colourful resume of fraudsters only if it is from a well known institute which very few can boast as alma mater.
To me, ethics and education - at any institute - are two different things. The terms corporate governance and ethics in business gaining currency in B-schools is a very recent phenomenon. The blue blooded US B-schools started to focus on corporate governance only after their alumni at Enron, Arthur Anderson, WorldCom, etc were caught red handed in world's biggest corporate scams.
Back home, there are quite a few cases where the super-educated were arrested in illegal acts. And, do keep in mind that only "illegal" activities make it to the papers. Save columnist like Sucheta Dalal, the media is too busy covering lives of celebrities to look into "unethical" activities or white-collar crimes. So, Ivy league education and ethics are different things.
The entire idea of ethics being taught in classrooms sounds laughable. The upbringing of 20+ years ensures that a decision to classify an activity as unethical is taken almost instantaneously. Rest of the time is spent building the argument supporting for the decision. Also, schools like Stanford Business School hesitate to express truth like saying Mukesh Ambani did not complete his MBA from school. Instead, they choose to use an utterly deceptive "pursued" to describe his stint at Stanford. When the schools themselves are not clear about what is true and ethical, how can one expect them to impart the value system to students?
Continuing with the IIM-Samsung case, this doesn't look like first.
- Sridhar Vagal, IG of Police, was the first police officer to go behind bar in the high-profile Telgi scam. He "allegedly accepted Rs 72 lakh from Telgi over a period of time and had amassed wealth and property amounting to Rs 50 crores". He is an alumnus of IIT-B and IIM-A.
- Sanjay Kumar, CEO, Computer Associates had to quit amidst charges of financial fraud. He is an alumnus of an IIM. (I couldn't find a more concrete link.)
- Another potentially unethical behaviour by IIM alumnus - Sushmita Sen made sexual harassment charges against a Coke executive, an IIM alumnus. In the out-of-court settlement, Coke paid 1.5 Crores.
Thousands of young people look at IIMs as their ultimate destination and toil to gain entry. To that extent IIM grads do have a 'role model' effect.Listen, all those India Shining campaigners. India has reached such a stage that the role models for the younger generation are the graduates of Ivy League schools. And these "role models" should behave truthfully only because they are the leaders of the society. Pity.
Vagal could have been a great role model. After having an enviable resume, he resisted the temptation to join corporate world, thereby denying himself a financially comfortable life. Instead, he chose to "serve" the nation. Had he not been nabbed, his "sacrifice" would have been glorified to no end.
"We, who condemn corruption at large should highlight the need for ethical practices in business."
OK, here is my prescription. To begin with the IIMs should stop bragging about the placement offers with $$$ salaries at large financial corporations for the reason that most (I am just being conservative by not using "all") have been found indulging in illegal and unethical business practices at some point in time. A more drastic step would be to ban all these companies from campus recruitment process. The steps would be to denounce the association with any alumnus working with such "unethical" corporations. Sounds ridiculous, right?
Apologies if this stinks too much of MBA bashing. I don't intend it to be. But, to me, such self-righteous argument built on fragile ground by a really admirable person is unbearable.
No comments:
Post a Comment