MBA Ethics Bowl 2009
Eight MBA students competed in the second annual MBA Ethics Bowl held on April 9th at the Madren Conference Center at Clemson. Three teams of students prepared presentations based on their analysis of a case centered on corporate ethical responsibility that featured dual ethical challenges faced by one company: (1) its controversial handling of a major environmental clean-up, and (2) its initiatives in corporate social responsibility. Each team presented its initial analysis of the case and responded to the judging panel’s questions, then the two finalists had the opportunity to refine their analyses in response to the judges’ comments and present again.
First-year student Ryan Fernandes took the lead in organizing the competition for his classmates because “ethical leadership and accountability has been a topic of discussion recently.” Fernandes noted that his interest in organizing the Ethics Bowl was spurred by several undergraduate experiences at Clemson in which he had the opportunity to participate in similar extracurricular activities that he valued very highly. According to Fernandes, one of the positive outcomes of the competition was that it allowed those who participated “to not only learn more about themselves and how they react in an ethical situation but also to learn how they react in a group decision.” He believes the competition “helped me gain an additional perspective as an MBA student in analyzing and applying a new framework to the situation.”
Another participant, first-year MBA student Kabe Moss, summarized her experience: “I thought that the case competition would be a good opportunity to apply decision techniques we had discussed in an ethics seminar in our Business Communications class. In the end, I believe the actual competition and discussions differed from how my team originally approached the case, which was a great chance to learn both how to modify ‘on the fly’ and how real businessmen/women approach ethical dilemmas. It also was eye-opening in that the short time frame for preparation necessitated a lot of trust and reliability within our team.”
This year’s competitors included the following teams:
- Winning Team: Gautam Bhattacharya, Ryan Fernandes, and Adam Stubblefield
- First Runner-Up: Kathryn (Kabe) Moss, Garima Srivastava, and Chenille Taylor
- Second Runner-Up: Michael Haberman and Omar Haque
Clemson’s Robert J. Rutland Institute for Ethics provided the case for the students and enlisted a distinguished panel of judges from the Institute’s Advisory Board. This year’s judges were: Mr. Joe Turner, Chairman and CEO of First Sun Management Corporation; Mr. Stephan Barton, Senior Principal of Physicians Planning Group, LLC; and Mr. Lewis Smoak, founding partner of Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart and Managing Shareholder of the firm’s Greenville office. Turner, who has been in business for over 40 years, said that competitions like the Ethics Bowl can help prepare tomorrow’s business leaders to critically evaluate the ethical dimensions of business decisions. He noted that the case these students analyzed was typical of real-world circumstances where “there are often no clear-cut solutions to complex situations.” Turner said he was “impressed with the ethical thought processes exhibited by each of the teams.”