Global Strategy in Action: Test YOUR Principles Just a few years ago, the dean of Duke’s Fuqua School of Business announced that 10 percent of its MBA class had been caught cheating on a take-home final exam and would be dismissed. These MBAs were “cream of the crop” students with six years of corporate experience and careers under way in the new “wiki” world of online collaboration and aggregation of others,’ knowledge via the Web as an emerging key source of competitive advantage. So they collaborated in crafting answers to the take-home final exam, sharing insights and ideas, and so forth. Their professors saw the similarity in answers, and, looking to evaluate individual performance, found the collaboration unethical, dishonest, lacking integrity, and fundamentally wrong. So they were dismissed for cheating. Three years later, Centenary College, a small Hackettstown, New Jersey-based institution, ended its MBA program for Chinese-speaking students after finding “evidence of widespread plagiarism,” the school said in a statement posted on its Web site. The China MBA program was based in Beijing, Shanghai, and Taiwan. All 400 students were given the choice of accepting a tuition refund—as much as $1,400—or taking a comprehensive exam to earn a degree.* According to the statement, all but two students decided to take a refund. The college also noted in the statement that students who cheat are ordinarily dismissed from the school, but the China MBA students are being given more leniency “in an effort to afford students every fair possibility.”* A BusinessWeek Commentary took issue with the Duke decision—and saw a different interpretation. Their point: the new world order is about teamwork, shared information. Social networking, a new culture of shared information, postmodern learning wiki style. Text messaging, downloading essays, getting questions answered from others, often unknown, via the Web. All of these are the new ways we work today. We function in an interdependent world, where success often hinges on creative collaboration, networking, and “googling” to tap a literal world of information and expertise available at the click of a keyboard or a cell phone. Others, starting with their Duke professors, viewed these students collaborating on a take-home exam as a conscious effort to break the rules, or at least, gain unauthorized advantage. And maybe, they apparently thought, this was a good situation about which to make an example in order to rein in an increasingly rudderless business culture. What do you think? Is what these students did ethical, principled leadership? Is it “cheating,” or simply collaborative learning?
• Do no harm.
• 2. Make things better.
• 3. Respect others.
• 4. Be fair.
• 5. Be compassionate.
The value of that kind of clarity, and transparency, as Wake Forest Dean Reinemund described it, can become a major force by which a leader will shape and move his or her organization.
Shaping Organizational Culture Leaders know well that the values and beliefs shared throughout their organization will shape how the work of the organization is done. And when attempting to embrace accelerated change, reshaping their organization’s culture is an activity that occupies considerable time for most leaders. Elements of good leadership—vision, performance, perseverance, principles, which have just been described—are important ways leaders shape organizational culture as well. Leaders shape organizational culture through their passion for the enterprise and the selection/development of talented managers to be future leaders. We will examine these two ideas and then cover the notion of organizational culture in greater detail. Passion, in a leadership sense, is a highly motivated sense of commitment to what you do and want to do. The late Steve Jobs, perhaps more so than most any business leader of the last 25 years, is an excellent example of the role of passion in the recipe of good organizational leadership. What he said when he returned as CEO of Apple after a 12-year absence, the company close to bankruptcy, is very instructive about understanding passion as a leader. Those first few months Apple was being written off by the business media, and employees were unsure too. Mr. Jobs held an informal staff meeting, and what he said is as instructive today as it was then:
Question:
Many discussion opportunities come up where you need to respond to other people's opinions and comments. After you have completed your Reading and practice Learning Activity, respond to your Discussion topic. Discussion Topic: Policies and Organizational Culture In preparation for this week’s Discussion, your ethical principles will be tested with a short case study where Duke’s Fuqua School of Business was under scrutiny in the manner it addressed the ten percent of MBA Program learners of cheating on a take home test. Another college from New Jersey had a similar incident with its Chinese-based MBA Program learners for plagiarism. Read the Test Your Principles, Exhibit 12.3, page 361, article in your text and respond to the following questions:
1. If you were asked to serve as an Ethics Review Arbitrator, what decision would you have rendered in support of the Duke University MBA Program learners’ issue? The Centenary College Chinese MBA Program?
2. In support of your ruling as Ethics Review Arbitrator, explain your key reasons for your decision.