Never mind images of Conrad Black behind bars: the strongest business ethics lesson Queen's University student Ruth Gardner ever had was when she went to prison herself.
A field trip to the minimum security Pittsburgh Institute near Kingston, Ont., clearly demonstrated what awaits, should this 21-year-old third-year commerce student — like the Lord of Crossharbour — steer herself wrong.
There, among the cinder blocks, white-collar criminals were thrown in with murderers and gangsters who had worked their way up the system on good behaviour. There was little or no control over daily routine, Ms. Gardner says; inmates vied to work in a nearby slaughterhouse, and were generally told what to do and when to do it.
"We definitely got a picture of the consequences of making unethical decisions in business. It could happen pretty quickly — you could end up in a place like this," says Ms. Gardner, who is on a one-year exchange from the University of Dublin.
Queen’s University professor Jim Ridler accompanied students on a field trip to the Frontenac Institution, a prison in Kingston, Ont. ‘We definitely got a picture of the consequences of making unethical decisions in business,’ says student Ruth Gardner, right. With them is student Stephanie Chatland. (Wayne Hiebert for the Globe and Mail)
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"I do think it would be hard to go from the business world to this."
Her class trip is part of a trend among Canadian business schools: Bent on turning out students who won't later embarrass their employers and alma mater, much less commit a financial crime or defraud the public, educators are taking the topic of ethics more seriously than ever.
Some, like Ms. Gardner's professor, Jim Ridler, are coming up with new ways to reach out to students.
"I wanted to make a point there, rather than in a nice cloistered class or in a textbook they're reading in their room. By being more dramatic about it, I'm getting the point to sink in," says Mr. Ridler, an assistant professor of business ethics.
The tour of this prison, as well as nearby Frontenac Institution, is a new take on Prof. Ridler's 14 years of teaching at Queen's School of Business. Now in its second year, the prison tour was available to his third- and fourth-year elective business and ethics students.
"In the last two years I've had the biggest classes I've had in some years. The raft of scandals we've had has percolated to them. They don't like it," he says. "There's a feeling out there, among a sizable portion of the business students, that there's a need to do better, not just out of fear of going to prison, but also for society."
Rather than take students to prison, Richard Ivey School of Business professor Gerard Seijts instead plans to bring a reformed criminal to the students. And who better to lecture to the graduating MBA class on their burden of responsibility at their May ring ceremony than Nick Leeson?
He is the trader whose lies and bets tallied $1.4-billion (U.S.) in losses, leading to the 1995 collapse of Barings Bank, then one of Britain's oldest banks. Mr. Leeson has done his time (four years in a Singapore prison) and now speaks to audiences around the world — for a fee. Prof. Seijts declined to say how much Ivey is paying for his May 8 appearance, but his usual fee is reportedly about $12,000 for a 30-minute speech.
Examples like those of Mr. Leeson and Enron's fallen corporate titans inspire Prof. Seijts to press on with his ethics teachings. "This would be my nightmare, if we had turned out a Jeffrey Skilling," he says, referring to the former chief executive officer of Enron Corp. who is now serving a 24-year term in Minnesota for conspiracy, fraud and insider trading. "We take this extremely seriously."
Among Dr. Seijts' teaching aids on the topic of ethics is a student trip to the Walkerton Clean Water Centre in Walkerton, Ont. It has been eight years since tainted water killed seven people in the town. Nearly half its residents fell ill after its water supply was infiltrated by deadly E. coli bacteria from farm runoff. Walkerton's Public Utilities Commission chief Stan Koebel knew this, but denied there was any problem. Then he went into seclusion.
Dr. Seijts says this kind of crisis offers an important lesson for business students, particularly given the years of improper operating practices with Walkerton's water supply, as well as the abdication of authority by Mr. Koebel (who was later sentenced to a year in jail).
Other class speakers have included Matt Melis, an engineer at NASA Glenn Research Center who worked on a report on the organizational errors that led to the space shuttle Columbia's failed return to Earth in February, 2003, killing seven crew members, and lawyer Joanna Gualtieri, who in the early 1990s blew the whistle on the Department of Foreign Affairs' lavish spending on official residences abroad.
Attitudes toward more dramatic approaches to teaching business ethics have changed among business faculty over the years. The Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto is no exception, says Rick Powers, the assistant dean and executive director of MBA programs.
There was a time, for example, when he would have dismissed the idea of having a white-collar criminal such as Mr. Leeson speak to any class. "My take on that ... was, 'Where there are so many examples of people doing it right and engaging in sound and proper ethics and principles, why would you bring in someone like that?' " Prof. Powers says.
But then he attended a talk by former MCI Inc. executive Walter Pavlo at a convention. Convicted of fraud and money laundering, Mr. Pavlo spent two years in jail before making a living speaking on how he got caught up in unethical business practices.
"What he was talking about were very simple little things, and everyone could see, it was a very slippery slope," Prof. Powers recalls. "Without totally realizing it, he had fallen into these practices that were unethical, and it wasn't even intentional."
The speech was so powerful that Prof. Powers changed his mind about whether convicted criminals have a place in the lecture halls. Even so, he adds, "You'd have to be very careful in who you brought in. They would have had to accept their wrongdoing."
Conrad Black, for example, would not be welcome in his class: "Absolutely not. He's never accepted responsibility that he's done anything wrong."
But you don't need high-profile names to grab the attention of students today, teachers say. The subject alone is sufficient.
If you wrote "corporate social responsibility" on the blackboard 10 years ago, it was apt to rouse a giggle or two, says Andrew Crane, a professor of business ethics at Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto.
Now, he says, students all have an opinion and background knowledge before they set foot in the classroom. "You don't need to sell the idea to students any more. The students come already interested, exposed to the issues, they read the newspapers."
At DeGroote School of Business at Ontario's McMaster University, students are engaged in ethics discussions throughout the MBA curriculum, not just in one or two classes, says Paul Bates, dean and industry professor of financial management services.
"About a year ago we had a broad debate about how to bring ethics into the class," Prof. Bates says. "The standard answer is some form of a capstone course on business ethics, which focuses on the compliance and legal side of ethics. We decided to take a more difficult route, imbuing every class or course."
Plans are being made for similar changes in the undergraduate classes, he added. The hope is that students will make better decisions as they progress through their careers.
As Prof. Bates says: "In my experience most people would get into trouble not because they are deliberately trying to make trouble, but because there was an error made, and they took the wrong path out of the error."
Theresa Ebden is a producer for Business News Network.
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