Harvard's MBA Oath Goes Viral

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But the idea of a code wasn't always noncontroversial. Three years ago, when the economy was booming, Thunderbird President Ángel Cabrera said instituting the pledge drew harsh criticism. One journalist, he recalls, called the practice "positively cretinous."

That was then. Now that the nation has lived through Bernie Madoff and AIG (AIG) bonuses, prevailing opinion seems largely to have come around to Cabrera's point of view. Ethics classes are filling up, campuses are starting to consider their carbon footprint, and there has been a proliferation of conferences and clubs devoted to corporate social responsibility. Much of this, Cabrera says, is in answer to growing student demand that was present even before the meltdown. One big reason: an influx into business school by members of the Millennial Generation, whose youthful idealism has already begun affecting a shift in B-school priorties from high finance to higher purpose.

"It's not just a temporary thing," Cabrera says. "I really think there's also a generational shift.…There is a demand, a thirst for this type of value-based ideology." He sees the events of the last month as setting the stage for a larger overhaul of what he has often said is a failed system of management. Business education, he says, has reached a "tipping point."

Just Words

It does seem like the rush to the oath was waiting to happen. Scott Osman, an executive MBA student at New York University's Stern School of Business (Stern Full-Time MBA Profile) said his class had been working on drawing up something similar when he got wind of Harvard's project. He said he sent an e-mail to his class, and within six hours, about 70% of the students had taken the Harvard pledge. Osman credited his class's enthusiasm to a "growing desire among MBAs that we want to do more than just make money."

At Northwestern, where the oath also went viral, graduating MBA David Hobbet says he was impressed by the large number of Kellogg grads who signed up, given the "minor effort" he and others put in. "Just a couple e-mails to friends," he says, generated dozens of Kellogg signatures.

But part of the worry surrounding the oath's popularity is just how easy it is to sign on. And how, once the pledge has been taken, there's no mechanism for enforcement. Even some MBAs who signed admit they won't hark back to the pledge religiously when confronted with ethical dilemmas as managers. "There's no cost," says Scott Holley, a 2009 Harvard grad who is both an oath signer and skeptic. "You say the oath, and you're done." He doesn't see the code having "any type of an impact on people's behavior."

Holley also worries that the oath could become another symbol of MBA hypocrisy if one of the signers turns out to be a bad egg—which he sees as a distinct possibility. The only people likely to sign the oath, he says, are those with no intention of complying, or those who don't need an oath to make them honest.

Another criticism is that the oath's broad scope makes it almost impossible to fulfill. What business leader can serve the interests of shareholders, while at the same time "strive to create sustainable economic, social, and environmental prosperity worldwide"? It's easy to envision a situation in which shareholder interests and the environment would be at odds.

Most critics, Holley among them, cede that the oath is a first step in the right direction. Even its proponents recognize that the project has a long way to go if it's not to be easily forgotten. "Just like in the post-Enron environment these things become fads and then quickly fade away," says Harvard's Khurana. To make sure that doesn't happen, he's working with Cabrera, the Aspen Institute, the World Economic Forum, and other organizations to develop a form of the oath. As for the restructuring of B-schools, that fight is a "multiyear effort," he says.

Like Khurana, the oath's founders seem committed to continuing the larger effort. "I'd hate for this to be a flash in the pan," says Adam Heltzer, who worked with Anderson to develop the MBA Oath site. "I'd hate for it to be like: 'This is a great publicity stunt. Way to go HBS, that was a funny joke.' I think whatever form it takes I want it to be meaningful and lasting. And I'm going to work hard to make sure that happens."

For now, the number of signatures on the site continues to grow—even if it does represent only a small percentage of business grads globally. As for the rest, including the half of Harvard's Class of 2009 who didn't take the oath, they could conceivably find themselves at a competitive disadvantage as the nation turns its collective attention to MBA ethics, for better or for worse. Says Khurana: "All things being equal, I prefer going to the surgeon who took the Hippocratic Oath vs. the one who didn't."

Anne VanderMey is a B-schools writer at BusinessWeek.

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