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MBA Perspectives: Business Focus Must Change

Filed under SOM MBA Office
Posted by , March 19, 2009
View all posts for March 2009

Today Net Impact, in partnership with the Aspen Institute, released the results from a survey that gathered the opinions of 1,850 MBA students (not just Net Impact members), representing over 80 graduate business programs. The study, “New Leaders, New Perspectives: A Survey of MBA Opinions on the Relationship Between Business and Social/Environmental Issues,” was conducted in order to understand current student opinions on careers, graduate programs, the economy, and the relationship between business and social/environmental issues.

The survey posed 23 close-ended questions that fell roughly into four categories: the recent global financial crisis; curriculum; career; and business and social responsibility.

Interesting findings include:

• 90% of today’s graduate students blame a focus in business on short-term rather than long-term results as one of the contributing factors to the global financial crisis

• There is a question as to how well students are being prepared to deal with such crises. Just 24% of respondents strongly agree that their graduate program is helping them learn how to make business decisions that will avert similar financial crises. Yet respondents also strongly agree that business schools should introduce financial models that take long-term social impacts into account (56%)

• Students also feel that the MBA curriculum at their schools should include more content related to sustainability and corporate responsibility (78%)

• Less than a third of respondents think that corporations are working towards the betterment of society (31%). Yet, they definitely believe that the for-profit sector should play a role in addressing social and environmental issues (88%) and that being responsible leads to corporate profits (77%)>>

View an executive summary and full report of the survey at:http://www.netimpact.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=2667

Read the official Press Release: http://www.csrwire.com/News/14781.html