B-School Ethics Endowment Will Fund Curriculum Changes

The $30 million endowment gift which the Business School received last week to fund an ethics program will be used to instill the teaching of ethics throughout the curriculum, rather than initiating specific elective ethics courses, a B-School administrator said yesterday.

The B-School will use the fund-which includes a $20 million gift from outgoing Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman John Shad-to establish a program similar to the Core curriculum, said Joseph L. Bower, an assistant B-School dean.

"It's easy to say, 'let's hire an ethicist and let him teach something.' Our goal is to find fundamental ways of improving this," said Bower, who is also a professor of business administration. "I don't think it's our objective to have this as an elective activity. It seems to us quite central that the required program deal with ethical issues."

The 200-member Business School faculty will likely appoint more than one committee to discuss the necessary changes which will be implemented in about 10 years, Bower said.

"I bet there will be more than one initiative," he said. "We might go at the challenge in several different ways."

But Joanne B. Ciulla, a former post-doctoral fellow at the B-School who nowteaches at the Wharton School of Business atUniversity of Pennsylvania, said she thoughtHarvard should approach these decisions carefully.

"There's a lot of people [at Harvard] who thinkthey know what ethical studies should be anddon't," Ciulla said. "They have to be real carefulthat experts in ethics and not just administratorsdefine what the program will be like."

Faculty and administrators agreed that Harvardcan exert major influence in the field of ethicsthrough its handling of the fund.

"In any field it is dangerous to have all thetheoretical work coming out of one place. [Harvardwill be] in a position to define the field,"Ciulla said.

"We play a very interesting role," Bower said,adding that 90 percent of the cases taught atbusiness schools throughout the world weredeveloped at Harvard.

"I don't think any [other business schools]have solved the problem [of teaching ethics] orfeel comfortable with what they have got," Bowersaid. "The curriculum that is developed here willbe shared."

Some of the money will be spent outside theBusiness School, and applied toward theUniversity-wide ethics program in the hope oftraining professors to teach business ethics,Bower said.

"The main part of the program is fourfellowships," said Dennis Thompson, WhiteheadProfessor of Government and the director of theprogram. "Four is sort of a small pilot project;it's just a beginning. We would like to havemore--maybe twice as many.

"With that amount of money you can make largechanges happen, but you have to have leadership,and [the B-School is] developing that, I wouldassume," Thompson said.Photo Courtesy Richard A. ChaseSEC Commissioner JOHN SHAD