Baylor University

     

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Baylor University
Baylor University (Hankamer)
 One Bear Place #98013
Waco, TX, 76798
United States
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Demographic Information

Number of full-time MBA students (2011): 

44

Number of part-time MBA students (2011): 

0

Total duration of full-time MBA program: 

16 months

MBA faculty (Fall 2010): 

157

Females as percent of student body: 

36%


Description of MBA Program: 

Embedded throughout each MBA class at Baylor are foundational themes: serving the community, working in teams, respecting global relationships. Chief among them, however, is the thread of ethics and responsible behavior.  

The mechanisms for launching discussions about social and environmental issues differs across disciplines, including situation/scenarios, case studies, surveys, free-wheeling discussions, and Q/A sessions that arise from the headlines in the Wall Street Journal or other daily business publications.

Students perceive Baylor to be in the forefront of serious consideration of ethics. Many of them participate in Baylor's Ethics Forum, although their attendance was not required. The discussions in the classroom enable students to ask questions as they naturally arise. Faculty cover ethics in a way that is appropriate and relevant.
 



How does the MBA program 'walk the talk' of social and environmental impact?: 

In an effort to follow through on our commitment to integrating social, ethical and environmental issues into our program we have established many concrete ways to help reflect our intentions. We currently have a chapter of Net Impact on campus. Their purpose is to look for ways to improve business' sustainability. We also host an Ethics Forum where we bring in speakers from around the country to speak about their social and ethical responsibilities. At this event we hold an internal and external case competition that highlights an ethical case dilemma. In addition to our own case competition, we also participate in several case competitions around the United States and Canada. Our students just recently competed in the TATA Cup Competition in Montreal, Canada where the topic of the case was focused around sustainability. Baylor also focuses on community service and giving back to the community. On our fall trip to New York City with our first semester students, the group volunteered with Meals on Wheels and spent the day delivering food to residents all around New York City.

Academic Department

Course Name: Management of Organizational Behavior
Instructor: Dr. Dawn Carlson

Management of Organizational Behavior is the study of behavioral science concepts relevant to the understanding of managerial processes and human behavior in organizations. In addition, this course emphasizes the need to adapt to change and the use of organizational development to effectively utilize people. This course focuses or organizational change, leadership, organizational culture, motivation, individual differences, team development, and utilization of human resources. We discuss ethics across the topics specifically focusing on how designing systems and developing leaders can help promote ethical behavior. We do this through readings, cases and current event discussions. This course provides an understanding of the components and dynamics of organizational behavior essential to any manager.

Course Name: Organizational Ethics
Instructor: Karin Waugh Zucker, Ch (Maj) Joseph R. Jeffries

The primary content of this course is ethics. What is ethics? Does a corporation have ethics or is it really the ethics of the leaders that is referred to? Does it matter? Can one be a good leader without being an ethical leader? Why or why not? After considering such questions, which surely address the social context of business ethics, we turn to decision-making models and explore several that enable decision-makers to consider the broad context of business decisions and to make those decisions ethically. Students also review current business decisions that led, for example, to the collapse of ENRON, the potential release of enormous quantities of patient information from the VA, and the issuance of subprime mortgages and ask themselves was there a point a which these activities became unethical? Were they unethical from the start? Was there an ethical component at all? Did an imbalance in the application of stakeholder theory lead to injustice?

Course Name: Problem Areas in International Economics
Instructor: Dr. Joseph Mckinney

This course looks at a variety of issues related to the global economy. The course is not highly technical in nature, but also has a definite policy emphasis. The goal of the course is that students gain a good understanding of how the global economy functions, information concerning the major current issues related to the global economy, and the implications of these issues for business firms operating in the global economy. The course will consider how international trade policies and practices affect the distribution of income and wealth within individual countries as well as among countries and regions of the world. Consideration will be given to the interplay of trade policy with other policy areas such as energy policy and environmental policy. For example, the recent proposal for a carbon border tax will be discussed and evaluated. Trade and human rights will also be discussed with regard to issues such as child labor and the implications of globalization for human trafficking. Ethical issues arising from the protection of intellectual property rights will be discussed. Consideration will be given to the institutional framework that has been put in place to address these issues, and how that framework might be improved.

Course Name: Professional Career Development
Instructor: Ken Buckley

MBA Professional Career Development consists of a variety of career exploration and development experiences designed to prioritize and focus the student’s job search needs as well as develop their leadership, communication and personal marketability. The course also works in concert with business executives, alumni and others to connect people, link resources and establish a community of support for every student seeking employment.

The course is designed to provide the student with:

*Enhanced brand management and personal marketability through your ability to communicate and articulate your respective skills

*Industry, company and job focusing analytical tools and exercises

*Networking opportunities and assistance

*Leadership, communication and presentation capabilities

*Career panels with outside speakers for informational and networking purposes

*Job interview skills spanning behavioral and case interviews

*Cost of living assessments

*Negotiations

The MBA Professional Career Development course instructs the student how to maximize their respective effectiveness in a social setting through brand management, communication and networking. The course also instructs the student to be uncompromising in their integrity with regards to job applications, correspondence, interviews, negotiations, personal commitments and actions within the workplace.

Course Name: Selected Topics in Business Law
Instructor: Karin Waugh Zucker

Although this course addresses very specific aspects of Business Law, discussions of the business environment, the place of corporations in American Law, and the appropriate actions of agents raise social and ethical issues. In ethical discussions, we look back at Organizational Ethics to attempt to identify the root cause of ethical lapses and review decision-making models to see how different paths might have led to very different results.

Course Name: Statistical Models in Business
Instructor: Dr. Kris Moore

This course allows students the opportunity to discover how businesses use statistics correctly to make business decisions. The course covers the ethical issues related to interpreting statistics properly. Cases and current events are studied to learn of appropriate corporate social responsibility in dealing with employees, customers, and competitors, as well as environmental issues.

Course Name: Strategic Management
Instructor: Dr. Patricia Norman

This course provides students with an opportunity to discover how businesses formulate, implement, and control their strategies. In addition, students learn about conditions and characteristics necessary for strategic success by introducing conceptual frameworks and by using examples of companies that succeeded or failed. We discuss the ethical issues related to various strategic decisions (e.g., what is ethical with respect to competitive behavior and actions; the role of leaders in establishing an ethical culture). Cases, current events discussions, and guest speakers often provide an avenue to discuss corporate social responsibility as well as ethical, environmental, and sustainability issues and how they can be addressed. In covering corporate governance, emphasis is placed on integrity as a foundational element of appropriate firm behavior. In addition to Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank, we cover how the effective use of various governance mechanisms including the board of directors, stock-based compensation, and institutional ownership can contribute to good corporation performance and citizenship. Our discussion of these mechanisms includes how they are often misused and fall short of their intended purpose.

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