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: Accounting in a Changing Environment
Instructor: Dr. Charles Stanley

This course covers technical accounting concepts that students must master in order to plan an operation effectively and to deal with a variety of accounting topics they will encounter in a changing environment. These topics include traditional cost allocation procedures, cost behavior and estimation, contribution margin income statements, budgets, cash flows, accounts receivable, inventories, plant and equipments, current and long-term liabilities and bonds, financing with debt and stock, off-balance sheet financing, basic tax issues, financial statement analysis, and ethical decision-making. We discuss ethical issues related to the managerial accounting topics and the role of management in establishing an ethical culture in the accounting area. We also use current events, cases, and speakers to provide discussions of corporate social responsibility as well as ethical and environmental issues. In addition, we discuss how ethics affects day-to-day operations and how corporate social responsibility and the environment affect operations. We emphasize the ethical issues associated with off-balance sheet financing and corporate social responsibility issues and environmental issues with financing. The students are presented a decision-making model for ethical dilemmas.

Course Name: Advanced Strategic Corporate Management
Instructor: Lt Suzanne J. Wood, Ph.D

Students are exposed to films/material regarding environmental issues from the beginning of the course to prepare them for the final project, a strategic analysis. Specifically, they review material on the global oil crisis & the creation of the electric car as background for creating an alternative fuels division at GM. Socially and ethically, students review specific cases and management strategies that contain innovative elements related to: values management, corporate social responsibility, and employee satisfaction. The Ben & Jerry’s case specifically addresses advocacy for social causes and employee satisfaction. Additionally, students view films and articles specific to corporate social responsibility, sustainability, and green initiatives.

Course Name: Business Law
Instructor: Patricia Nunley

This course is designed to provide students with sufficient understanding to identify and manage legal and ethical issues in financial and commercial transactions. This type of understanding requires a knowledge of the operation of business organizations, the various provisions in the Uniform Commercial Code that govern commercial transactions, federal securities regulations, and various other pertinent laws. Accordingly, students are introduced to the fundamental laws governing financial and commercial transactions, incorporating aspects of corporate governance, social responsibility, and ethical principles in business decisionmaking. Particular emphasis is given to the impact of the laws, like Sarbanes-Oxley, governing business transactions that present the greatest risks of legal liability and ethical implications, as well as the rules that provide protection from legal liability and ethical violations, like the business judgment rule. These topics are then viewed in the context of real world application through the use of case studies, current event discussions, guest speakers, field studies, and various other projects in order for students to develop a framework with which to analyze various legal and ethical issues in financial and commercial transactions which they may encounter in the future.

Course Name: Cyber Security Human Factors: Ethics, Integrity, Practices, Policies, and Procedures
Instructor: Dr. Jonathan Trower

Despite the long name for this course, it really is a course about information technology, ethics, and privacy. IT certainly has the potential to impact individuals, organizations, and society in many different ways, some positive and some not. Throughout the entire course we explore a wide variety of IT-related topics (see syllabus) and analyze them from the perspective of several different ethical frameworks. As we discuss each chapter and case study students are expected to frame their discussions within one of those frameworks. Students are also expected to participate in one or more of the HSB “Business Ethics Forum” activities held during the fall semester.

Course Name: CYBERLAW
Instructor: Dr. Blake Lecrone

This course is designed to give students an overview of legal and societal issues that individuals and corporations face in the new world of cyberspace. The digital revolution has also roused ethical problems, and these are covered in the course under topics such as infringement of patent, copyright, and trademark laws, identity theft, invasion of privacy issues involving intrusion, e-mail defamation, data mining violations, breach of confidentiality agreements, theft of trade secrets, child and adult pornography, and methods to handle the differences in U.S. and international law.

Throughout the course these topics are thoroughly covered and ethical repercussions for individuals and corporations are explored. Court decisions, emerging new cyber law statutes and guest speakers also enhance the path to understanding the rapidly evolving internet.

Course Name: Healthcare Contracting and Negotiations
Instructor: Karin Waugh Zucker, Kim K. Judd, JD

Discussions of "basic" non-governmental contracting allow the exploration of the division between equity and law in old British courts, the fact that this has been largely abolished in the United States, and the place that ethics now holds in our system. Social and ethical issues are raised in attempts to contract with incompetents, in the affects of breach, and in the requirement to attempt to mitigate damages. Governmental contracting speaks to social issues of the greater good and caveat emptor. Negotiations allows social policy for and against litigation.

Course Name: International Business
Instructor: Lt Suzanne J. Wood, Ph.D.

Social issues relating to culture, management across cultures and cultural sensitivity, are explored explicitly. Those relating to global development and the sale of products and services to the poor are addressed within social and ethical contexts. Specifically, students are exposed to cases, films, & lecture material wherein the production/sale of services and products to vulnerable populations (poor, Third World, uneducated) is discussed at length. In addition the protection of intellectual property as an impediment to the sale of products to underserved populations is also discussed. Environmental issues are explored in terms of the creation of sustainable and/or green products, or as operations are modified so as to account for pollution and related problems, as with the Whole Foods Market Case and/or via films such as The Corporation.

Course Name: International Management
Instructor: Dr. Les Palich

The International Management course encourages and challenges students to look at international markets as a domain for business growth and opportunity. The course is divided into two parts, each related to one of the following two general themes: (1) contexts supporting international management and (2) various dimensions of strategy that international firms must consider. The first topic covered in the course is focused on the business responsibility of international firms, which addresses social, environmental, and ethical challenges very directly and highlights the importance of such issues for classroom discussions throughout the semester. These matters are then woven into the course at several points (often through informal discussion), but they are touched on with great emphasis when the following topics are introduced in class (one full day per topic): legal systems, the United States Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, differences in culture, the political economy of international trade, and global human resource management. Issues such as AIDS, corruption, environmental degradation, human trafficking, and poverty are also discussed at considerable length through student-led presentations on “International Topics” impacting six major regions of the world, which are scheduled over three full days of class during the semester.

Course Name: Investment Analysis
Instructor: Dr. William Reichenstein

This course explains that brokers have a duty to recommend "suitable investments", while investment advisors have a duty to recommend investments in the "best interest of the client." Examples are given of unethical investments. It is devoted 100% to issues in the CFA Global Body of Knowledge.

Course Name: Management Communications
Instructor: Anne Grinols, Randall Waller

In Management Communication (BUS 5390), students learn how to communicate effectively in business settings, from executive presentations to think-on-your feet opportunities to small-group interaction. They identify barriers to communication and learn how to break down those barriers. They also discuss corporate communication issues including ethics and social responsibility. In the two weeks devoted to communicating ethics, we cover ethical decision-making, conflict of interest, slippery slope, and corporate social responsibility – doing well and doing good. Students also take an ethics survey, discuss business ethics awareness in today’s culture, environment in society and business, and participate in an ethics case competition in ethical leadership. In the discussion of identity, reputation, and image, students consider how a company’s approach to ethical, social, and environment responsibility contributes to its value with its stakeholders.

Pages

Type of Offering

Baylor Business Ethics Forum
Date: November, 2010

The Dale P. Jones Business Ethics Forum engages students, faculty, alumni and business leaders in discussions of major ethical issues facing the business world today. The 2010 forum involves participants in exploring ethical issues related to leadership and marketing practices affecting personal and corporate reputations, rights and responsibilities. Speakers included: Dina Dwyer-Owens, CEO of the Dwyer Group; Eric Hinton, Lennox International; Jacki Trevino, Dressler; Bonnie Wurzbacher, Senior Vice President of Global Customer Leadership of The Coca-Cola Company; Pete Blackshaw, Executive Vice President of Digital Strategic Services, Nielsen-McKinsey.

Community Service
Type: Community Service

Baylor MBA's use their business skills to give back to the community. More than 25 MBAs are volunteering along side business executives to help prisoners who are part of the Prison Entrepreneurship Program (PEP) prepare business plans. The Baylor volunteers are assigned to one student or team so they can become familiar with the PEP students' business plan(s). Helping edit the students' work via e-mail, over the phone and face-to-face on scheduled visits to the Hamilton Unit has proven to be extremely beneficial for both prisoners and MBA students.

Career Services

In BUS 5111, BUS 5112 and BUS 5V95 the students face ethical decisions regarding job/internship negotiations, organizational dynamics, peer evaluations, resume and personal brand integrity as well as self assessments honesty. The students have assignments that deal with each of these items and their respective performance is evaluated.

In addition, The Career Management staff also sends two students to the Net Impact conference every year in the fall. They monitor students for ethical conduct during all job seeking activities, including: sticking to commitments made, and accurate display of information to employers.

Net Impact

In Fall 2010, Net Impact, an international member organization aiming to improve the world through business, found its way on the Baylor campus.

Deceptive Impression Management: Does deception pay in established workplace relationships?
Author(s): Dawn Carlson; John Carlson; Merideth Ferguson

We examine deceptive impression management’s effect on a supervisor’s ratings of promotability and relationship quality (i.e., leader–member exchange) via the mediating role of the supervisor’s recognition of deception. Extending ego depletion theory using social information processing theory, we argue that deceptive impression management in a supervisor-subordinate relationship is difficult to accomplish and the degree that deception is detected will negatively impact desired outcomes. Data collected from a matched sample of 171 public sector employees and their supervisors supported this model and indicated that recognition fully mediated the negative relationships between deceptive impression management with supervisor’s rating of promotability and relationship quality.

Journal Title: Journal of Business Ethics Volume: Edition: Online Only Page Numbers:
Effective Information Security Requires a Balance of Social and Technology Factores
Author(s): Tim Kayworth

Industry experts have called for organizations to be more strategic in their approach to information security, yet it has not been clear what such an approach looks like in practice or how firms actually achieve this. To address this issue, we interviewed 21 information security executives from 11 organizations. Our results suggest that a strategically focused information security strategy encompasses not only IT products and solutions but also organizational integration and social alignment mechanisms. Together, these form a framework for a socio-technical approach to information security that achieves three objectives: balancing the need to secure information assets against the need to enable the business, maintaining compliance, and ensuring cultural fit. The article describes these objectives and the security alignment mechanisms needed to achieve them and concludes with guidelines that can be applied to ensure effective information security management in different organizational settings.

Journal Title: MIS Quarterly (Management Information Systems Research Centre, University of Minnesota) Volume: 9 Edition: 3 Page Numbers: 163-175
Linking team resources to work-family enrichment and satisfaction
Author(s): Dawn Carlson; Emily Hunter

Work-family scholars now recognize the potential positive effects of participation in one life domain (i.e., work or family) on performance in other life domains. We examined how employees might benefit from team resources, which are highly relevant to the modern workplace, in both work and non-work domains via work-family enrichment. Using the Resource-Gain-Development model (Wayne, Grzywacz, Carlson, & Kacmar, 2007), we explored how team resources contribute to enrichment and resulting project and family satisfaction. Using multilevel structural equation modeling (ML-SEM) to analyze student data (N = 344) across multiple class projects, we demonstrated that individuals with team resources were more likely to experience both work-to-family and family-to-work enrichment. Further, enrichment mediated the relationship between team resources and satisfaction with the originating domain.

Journal Title: Journal of Vocational Behavior Volume: 77 Edition: 2 Page Numbers: 304-312
The impact of moral intensity dimensions on ethical decision making: Assessing the relevance of orientation
Author(s): Dawn Carlson

Presents a study that examined the influence of the characteristics of the moral issue on the ethical decision-making process. Impact of the dimensions of moral intensity on an ethical decision; Strength of the effect of moral intensity on an ethical decision across unique orientations; Recognition of moral issue.

Journal Title: Journal of Management Inquiry Volume: 14 Edition: 1 Page Numbers: 15-16