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A core part of the Saunders College of Business mission is for our students to "develop a sturdy ethical framework ". As a result, ethics is often integrated as part of core and elective classes. Additional speakers and activities are arranged by the Institute for Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility. The college has also established an Ethics Steering Committee. In addition, sustainability is a growing focus on the RIT campus. As a result, we now offer an MBA concentration in Environmentally Sustainable Management.
RIT seeks to become a world leader in sustainability education, research, and practice. As we strive to infuse innovation and creativity into every element of our campus, sustainability has become a major focus.
Scores of projects are being carried out by students, faculty, and staff, and just as many are being hatched in classrooms, offices, kitchens, and workshops across campus.
Our comprehensive and interdisciplinary commitment is spearheaded by President Bill Destler, who signed the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment in 2008. Signed by several hundred colleges nationwide, the Presidents Climate Commitment provides support and a framework for colleges and universities to go carbon neutral. There is particular emphasis on reducing greenhouse gas emissions while accelerating sustainability-related research and educational programs.
By making the campus more environmentally friendly and by engaging in and learning more about sustainable practices, the RIT community improves the extended environment in real and measurable ways. By doing so, we can take steps now to ensure that the campus, the Rochester area, and the greater world in which we live will be cleaner, healthier, and more livable tomorrow than they are today.
Visible examples of campus commitment are the College of Applied Science and Technology (CAST) Engineering Technology Hall and the Student Innovation Center. Both have achieved high levels of LEED certification. Established by the U.S. Green Building Council, LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is the widely accepted rating system for evaluating sustainable buildings. Both buildings were cited in the College Sustainability Report Card, which commended RIT’s policy requiring all new construction to meet at least LEED Silver certification criteria.
Habitat Conservation and Restoration:
RIT Habitat for Humanity:
SEAL:
Focusing on Recycling and Energy Conservation:
The College Sustainability Report Card for 2009 selected RIT as a “Campus Sustainability Leader” as part of its annual survey of American colleges and universities.
To view RIT’s complete report, visit www.greenreportcard.org
Objectives of the course include:
-Understand the current political and ethical issues confronting accoutning practices.
-Understand the limitations of financial measures of performance.
There is also a significant integration of global issues affecting accounting practices, as what may be common in one region is often un-ethical or fraudulent in another.
Course Objective:
To apply theory to complex problems, emphasizing business combinations, and to issues related to governmental units and to not-for-profit entities.
The second class session is devoted to ethics and consumer behavior.
Course Objectives includes learning the auditor's role in society, including their ethical and legal responsisbilities.
Particular focus is given on topics such as fraud and Sarbanes Oxley.
Each classroom session includes case discussion of an actual audit situation, many of which also incorporate important ethical and legal decisions (e.g. Enron, Bernard madoff, Waste management and Sunbeam).
This course examines business ethics from both an organizational and managerial perspective. Students will examine the goal of business organizations, as well as individual conduct in business settings. Ethical reasoning and ethical leadership will guide debate on topics such as: creating an ethical climate in an organization, honesty, affirmative action, environmental ethics, ethics in advertising and sales, financial management, personnel management, and the role of character and virtues in effective leadership.
Objectives include: (a) developing a foundation of understanding of the relationship between the legal system, ethics and business; (b) alert students to typical legal problems which arise in business and possible solutions; (c) provide an understanding of the legal system of this country and what it can and cannot do.
Class sessions also include topics such as environmental law, employment law and international law.
Students must prepare graded position papers on 18 cases. 3 of which are ethical cases and 5 of which are judgment cases.
The first classroom session includes an analytical framework for ethical decision making so that it can be revisited throughout the course when necessary.
One class session is devoted to Green international business and the topic of global warming. Cultural analysis and managing such differences in the global environment is focused on throughout the course.
For example, there is a team presentation on a specific industry in a specific region (20% of grade). Content for the presentation must include political and socio-cultural factors and how they affect doing international business in this specific context.
Class session topics include:
- Global HRM
- EEO and Safety
- Ethics of HRM
The E. Philip Saunders College of Business at RIT, in conjunction with the Rochester Women's Network, recently hosted the second annual Power Your Potential leadership conference for women.
The event featured workshops, a panel discussion, and a keynote speech by Van Bortel Group President and CEO Kitty Van Bortel.
The Institute, along with Rochester area businesses, worked with the Nature Conservancy to clear up and repair the 100 Acre Swamp – a wonderful preserve in the Rochester area. RIT had a great turn out – as students from several colleges showed up to lend a hand. Thanks for the Lowenthal Group and SEAL for helping recruit students for this great event.
Students from the E. Philip Saunders College of Business at RIT recently finished another season of preparing taxes for eligible families through the Empire Justice Center-led program, Creating Assets, Savings & Hope, better known as CASH.
Accounting faculty member Roberta Klein is the long-time RIT liaison with the CASH program.
Each of the student tax-preparers spent at least four hours each week at one of the area's CASH sites.
The Graduate Management Association organized and sponsored a faculty debate on the goal of the firm and ethics
The conference has one session devoted to Opportunities in Sustainability.
This past year (2010) the keynote speaker for the conference with Kevin Surace, '85 BT EE, Chairman & CEO of Serious Materials.
Serious Materials, a green building materials company focusing on energy efficiency retrofits, raised $150 million through venture investments during the down economy – an anomaly in the current economic state. The building industry has tanked for almost two years yet, green building has become its "bright" spot and Surace's company is a giant in the making.
The White House cited Serious Materials, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., as an example of the benefits of the economic stimulus package, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Serious Materials develops and manufactures sustainable building materials that save energy and money, improve comfort, and aggressively address climate change. The expanding company is hiring new employees to help manufacture its highly insulated windows, glass, and drywall material.
Surace was named the 2009 Entrepreneur of the Year by Inc. Magazine.
Finding the Ethical Edge: A one-day course on the value and practice of good business ethics – a practical and tangible basis that helps owners and managers create an ethical culture, make ethical choices and improve bottom lines. Co-sponsored by the RIT Saunders College and the Rochester Area Business Ethics Foundation.
The Institute for Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility maintains a job board on its website as well as a mailing list for students and alumni.
Rockhurst Career Center maintains active contacts with a number of regional engineering firms that serve society through their environmental programming. Firms include Black and Veatch, Burns and McDonald, JE Dunn.
The Clean Energy Incubator is a joint effort by the Golisano Institute for Sustainability and RIT’s Venture Creations business incubator, that assists early stage clean energy companies in product development, business and marketing planning, and technolo
The Institute for Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility, established in 1999, works to promote ethics in the RIT community by providing knowledge, through activities such as course development and instruction, seminars, presentations, and community outreach to assist individuals in understanding the importance of ethical decision making in their personal lives and in their professional careers.
The Sustainable Print Systems Laboratory (SPSL) at RIT is a collaborative of researchers at RIT focused on understanding sustainability issues in printing systems. The main objective of the Lab is to develop insights and tools specific to the print industry that can be used by product development practitioners to better integrate environmental, social and economic considerations into their R&D decision-making process. In support of this overarching objective, the Lab focuses on projects that are:
Relevant: of interest to a range of printer and printing supply companies. In particular, projects need to consider the entire value chain of the print industry, as well as the entire product life-cycle.
System-level and multi-disciplinary: having the unifying theme of strategic business or product development decision making. The main contribution that SPSL can make is to study the problem holistically and leverage the extensive resources both at RIT and within the Print Industry.
Innovative: involving technical and inventive approaches to reach solutions. While the decisions may be business or product development focused, they ultimately need to relate to technical decisions facing the print industry, a particular print value chain, or specific organization within that chain.
The Lowenthal Service Group is a volunteer service organization. The students serve as ambassadors for the college in numerous events. The goal of the group is to help students become active leaders and professionals in business. Club meetings are held on an event basis, as needed.
When investigating the use of information systems within organizations, researchers inevitably make decisions relating to the classification, or ‘stratification’, of information technology users. Most commonly, users are stratified along functional boundaries or by their membership in various communities of practice. It is important to note, however, that any such method of social stratification necessarily focuses the attention of a researcher on certain issues while unavoidably downplaying or neglecting other concerns. Individuals whose interests, values or identification align with these neglected issues may be inadvertently marginalized by the research approach. This observation suggests a range of ethical concerns related to the methods of social stratification used by researchers. In this paper, we argue that the method by which information systems researchers stratify organizational actors in their research has significant ethical implications. We propose a framework that maps stratification strategies that researchers bring to their analyses using Weber's theory of stratification and the dimensions of class, status and party, in conjunction with his distinction between heterogeneous and homogenous forms of work. We offer illustrative theoretical lenses for each category in the framework and demonstrate how each lens favours certain issues and potentially neglects others.
The Six Facets Model of technology management has previously only been applied to process innovation at the firm and the industry level. In this article, the model is applied to product innovation for the first time. In the context of genetically-modified organisms in the agribusiness industry, we examine radical product innovation through the Six Facets Model. We propose, based on the history of genetically-modified organisms in agribusiness, that when applied to product innovation the Six Facets Model will benefit considerably from the inclusion of potential negative externalities and the reactions of external stakeholders.
Integrity is frequently used in the management literature as a normative descriptor, especially with regard to leadership. The study of integrity and leadership, though, suffers from a lack of a well-specified theoretical base. This paper addresses this problem by suggesting how integrity, defined as the consistency between words and actions, may be conceptualized at different levels of analysis (individual, group, and organization). Through aseries of propositions, we explore how individual leader integrity can affect outcomes such as trust, satisfaction, performance, and follower integrity. We also propose that integrity may be ascribed to groups and organizations, and explore the role that a group leader plays in fostering group- and organization-level integrity and outcomes such as trust and performance. Finally, we consider how leaders may help to resolve cross-level integritydiscrepancies.
Purpose : This paper aims to examine the research questions: Do executive and non-executive directors face similar labor market penalties upon revelation of accounting fraud? Are all executive directors treated by markets as a homogenous group? Or, do executive directors who are top managers face stiffer penalties than other executive directors? Design/methodology/approach: Board membership of incumbent directors in US firms accused of accounting fraud are tracked for three years after the revelation. Two labor market consequences/penalties are considered. Probability of losing internal, own firm board seat is the likelihood that incumbent directors leave the accused firm’s board upon accounting fraud revelation. The likelihood of losing at least one external board seat (outside directorship) is also examined. Both univariate tests and multivariate LOGIT regressions are used to conduct the analysis. Findings: Compared to non-executive directors, executive directors are more than twice as likely to lose own firm board seat and at least five times as likely to lose at least one outside directorship. Moreover, all executives, top or otherwise, appear to face similar tough penalties. Research limitation/implications: Accounting fraud is a rare event; this may limit the generality of the findings. Results obtained from a US sample may be applicable to countries with well-developed capital and labor markets. Results imply that the labor market for directors serves a vital function in the US-style corporate governance environment; labor market discipline provides at least some incentives for board members, including non-employee directors and other executive directors, to perform their fiduciary duties. Originality/value: This is the first study that utilizes a single corporate event to analyze the operation of the labor market across different categories of directors. Also, while studies have examined penalties on top executives there is no evidence that other executives who also serve on the board of the accused firms suffer labor market penalties.
An important area of business ethics research focuses on how otherwise normal and law-abiding individuals can engage in acts of corruption. Key in this literature is the concept of rationalization. This is where individuals attempt to justify past and future corrupt deeds to themselves and others. In this article, we argue that rationalization often entails a process of overcompensation whereby the justification forwarded is excessive in relation to the actual act. Such over-rationalization provides an impetus for further and more serious acts of illegality. Using a number of high profile cases, it is argued that this dynamic gap between the act and excessive rationalization can explain why corruption often escalates in severity and scope in the organization.
The U.S. manufacturing base has eroded during the last decade as corporations have taken advantage of the cost and tax savings from manufacturing or remanufacturing product overseas. The United States has transitioned from being the largest worldwide manufacturer to a net importer of finished products. This has resulted in a concurrent trade imbalance, currency pressures, and a diminished economic base. U.S.–based multinationals have shifted manufacturing to low-cost and low–tax rate countries. This shift has been encouraged by the globalization of technology, improved education and skills outside the United States, and “free trade” economic policies. The authors believe that this shift has also been motivated by U.S. tax policy. The discussion below will cover possible changes in tax policy that would incentivize U.S. economic interests, create jobs, and improve the U.S. fiscal and trade balances.
Virtue-based research in business ethics has increased over the last two decades, but most of the research has focused on the actions of an individual person. In this article, we examine the associations among team-level virtues using data from two studies. Specifically, we investigate whether transparency (usually thought to be an organizational- or collective-level construct), behavioral integrity (usually thought to be an individual-level construct), and trust (usually thought to be an individual-level construct) can be conceptualized and operate at the team level of analysis and, if so, what their relationships are to team performance. Using Partial Least Squares (PLS) analysis, we found in both studies that team transparency was positively related to team behavioral integrity, which in turn was positively related to team trust. We also found evidence of a positive relationship between team trust and team performance. Implications of these findings for future teams and ethics research are discussed.
The authors examined the effects of ethical leadership on follower organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and deviant behavior. Drawing upon research related to the behavioral plasticity hypothesis, the authors examined a moderating role of follower selfesteem in these relationships. Results from a field study revealed that ethical leadership is positively related to follower OCB and negatively related to deviance. We found that these relationships are moderated by followers’ self-esteem, such that the relationships between ethical leadership and OCB as well as between ethical leadership and deviant behavior are weaker when followers’ selfesteem is high than low. Implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed.
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