A new look for a new world
May, 2009
MBS Dean, Jennifer George explains how MBS is quietly innovating
There’s nothing like adversity to generate innovation, and as we weather the worst economic downturn in nearly 80 years, MBS is quietly innovating.
First there’s a host of new elective subjects, ranging from Managerial Judgement by Professor Jill Klein to Negotiation and Conflict Management by Professor Karen (“Etty”) Jehn.
Jill has recently joined MBS from INSEAD and Etty has joined from Wharton School and Leiden University in the Netherlands.
Jill’s course is about correctly assessing risk and understanding where people make errors due to over confidence. The financial crisis can be partly attributed to people who failed to understand risk.
Our advice is that students must understand quantitative elements of financial information—how to analyse financial statements, management accounting and financial risks.
Not many programs in Australia require this. They tend to concentrate more on soft skills, HR or marketing and leave out the more difficult financial subjects. If students do not understand the financial risks in the companies they manage, they risk repeating the mistakes that contributed to this credit crisis.
Our role at MBS is to educate leaders who understand enough about the finances and the risks to make wise decisions. In the face of the current credit crisis, the students themselves now recognise the value behind this philosophy.
Despite popular thinking business schools are not all about the bottom line in profits. We have a very active Net Impact chapter. We have courses in business sustainability. And we have our own philosopher in residence.
We also have an endowed Professorship created by John Gourlay in 2005 in response to corporate bad behaviour of companies like Enron and WorldCom and HIH.
He believed universities were not doing enough to educate people going into the financial services sector and so created the Professorship with a $2.5 million gift to MBS and Trinity College.
This is the most valuable teaching endowment at MBS. It brings each year a renowned scholar from around the world to teach, share research and engage with the corporate sector.
The 2009 Gourlay Visiting Professor of Ethics in Business, joining us in October, is Professor Ed Freeman from the Darden School of Business, University of Virginia.
Professor Freeman is the Elis and Signe Olsson Professor of Business Administration at The Darden School, Academic Director of the Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics, and co-Director of Darden's Olsson Center for Applied Ethics, one of the world's leading academic centres for the study of ethics.
Freeman is also Professor of Religious Studies and a Faculty Advisor to the University's Institute for Practical Ethics and Adjunct Professor of Stakeholder Management at the Copenhagen Business School in Denmark.
