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Duquesne University’s John F. Donahue Graduate
School of Business has been identified as
one of only three schools scoring in the
highest category of ethics content in a recent
academic survey.
All three of the high-scoring universities—Duquesne,
Georgetown and Notre Dame—are Roman Catholic
institutions.
The business schools’ ethics programs were
surveyed in an article in the Academy
of Management Learning and Education. The sampling showed 87
percent of the 183 business schools surveyed scored
in the bottom half of the ethics content scale
because they had only one required or elective
business course or none at all. Schools involved
included those ranked by Business
Week and U.S.
News and World Report, and others with full-time
MBA programs, including Carnegie Mellon and the
University of Pittsburgh, as well as Duquesne.
“In the clearest finding of the study,
MBA programs at religious affiliation universities
are more likely to include ethics-related courses
in their curricula,” wrote Joel M. Evans,
Linda K. Trevino and Gary R. Weaver in the article
Who’s in the Ethics Driver’s Seat?
Factors Influencing Ethics in the MBA Curriculum.
The authors noted that “inclusion of the
three outlier schools (Duquesne, Georgetown and
Notre Dame) would have greatly strengthened the
main finding of this study: Religious affiliation
is highly influential in determining the amount
of ethics content in the curriculum.”
Duquesne’s graduate program was distinguished
because MBA students are required to complete not
only an applied business ethics course, but also
can take electives in the areas of information
ethics, organizational ethics and global ethics.
Independent studies in the area of business ethics
also are available.
“All business students come away with skills
in subjects like accounting, but we also educate
them that ethics is part of decision-making,” said
Dr. Jim Weber, director of Duquesne’s Beard
Center for Leadership in Ethics. “Being
in the core curriculum means that ethics is one
of the basic skills that students need for their
major. Ethics is an important course they have
upfront and can use in other classes.
“People don’t perceive what they
do as ethics, but ethics influence your interactions
with every other person,” Weber said.
In the classroom, ethics can translate into discussions
of surveillance, drug testing, gift giving, compliance,
confidentiality, competitive intelligence and insider
trading.
“We develop training programs so
a practical, applied approach to ethics can be
used by people who are working,” Weber said.
Duquesne University
Duquesne is a private, coeducational university
with nearly 10,000 students. An extensive
selection of undergraduate and graduate degree
programs is offered across 10 schools of study.
Duquesne is consistently ranked among the nation's
top Catholic universities for its award-winning
faculty and 128-year tradition of academic excellence. | 
