1996 Business Ethics Fortnight

A Tradition of Commitment to Ethics As part of an ongoing commitment to prepare students for life's inevitable ethical challenges, Loyola Marymount University has, since 1985, conducted an annual program devoted to business ethics. Under the leadership of Dean John Wholihan, the College of Business Administration has brought together executives, ethicists, attorneys, public officials, and other experts to explore the ethical issues related to a particular industry or aspect of business. "Business Ethics Week" focused on such diverse and critical topics as ethics and television, women in the workplace, and the situation facing both business and government after the Los Angeles riots. This yearly series of lectures and panels educated students about the necessity, difficulty, costs, and rewards of conducting business ethically.

Business Ethics Fortnight

In the fall of 1995, "Business Ethics Week" came under the direction of LMU's new Center for Business Ethics and grew into "Business Ethics Fortnight." This two week educational program aims to build on the success of "Business Ethics Week" in a way that engages students as active learners and increases the amount of direct contact they have with men and women in business. Supervised by Thomas I. White, the Center's Director and the first permanent holder of the university's Hilton Chair of Business Ethics, "Business Ethics Fortnight" ran from March 18 to April 1, 1996.

In its inaugural year, this unique program consisted of four elements:

. a student team case competition;

. a combined athletic competition and fund raising event;

. a combined academic/athletic competition;

. a concluding panel discussion.

I. Student Team Case Competition

The centerpiece of Business Ethics Fortnight was a student team case competition for LMU students. Students were invited to assemble teams of three to six members and compete for cash prizes. Their task was to research an ethical issue connected with an actual business, come to a recommendation, and prepare a 20 to 30 minute presentation in which they imagined that they were addressing the senior management of that company. Virtually all of the cases were contributed by Southern California businesses. Companies were given the option of offering problems that they were either currently facing or had successfully handled in the past. (If the latter, students were not given the company's solution.)

The theme chosen for the 1996 competition was business, ethics and the environment. Virtually every environmental problem poses risks to human health or involves a conflict between fundamental rights of different groups. Accordingly, students should have a relatively easy time uncovering the ethical implications of these issues when businesses face them. In addition, because environmental issues are a particularly pressing aspect of living and doing business in the Los Angeles basin, it was hoped that this would increase interest in the competition among students and companies.

Each team's job was to educate its audience about the problem they researched and then to argue for their solution. Presentations were judged by a combination of business people and faculty on how thorough, realistic, and convincing they were. The task of each team was demanding: presentations had to cover everything from relevant legal and ethical to financial and scientific matters. Solutions had to pass muster on all four counts. In order to help students with the task, written guidelines were distributed and two workshops were offered: one on research skills and strategies, taught by Anthony Amodeo of the LMU Library Reference Department, and another on presentation skills, conducted by Mark Busch of Northrop Grumman.

The competition was designed to help students develop specific, practical skills.

. Students learned how to do research about multi-faceted, real-life dilemmas in businesses and to reconcile a variety of often conflicting demands-financial, ethical, and environmental.

. Students learned about team-building, group dynamics, and the advantages and challenges of working on a team.

. They learned how to put together an effective presentation.

. And they practiced these skills in a low-risk environment, that is, one in which their job, reputation, a promotion, or raise was not riding on the outcome.

Response from students, faculty, and area businesses was very gratifying: 141 students put together 31 teams and worked on 22 cases connected with 13 companies. (Most teams came from 5 sections of 2 courses that required students to participate: Business as an Institution in Society and Christian Ethics in the Marketplace.) Each team made a presentation in a preliminary round of the competition, and 8 teams then advanced to the finals. Presentations were judged by 60 volunteers from area businesses (including 21 members of LMU's MBA program) and 23 faculty from a variety of disciplines (management, finance, CIS, marketing, business law, accounting, theological studies, philosophy, and mathematics).

First place and the $1,000 Emmons Prize were won by a team that worked on noise pollution at the Los Angeles airport. Two teams tied for second place, each winning $500: a team that discussed the use of polystyrene by Marriott's campus food service, and a team that studied a major automobile manufacturer's dilemma about how best to use a piece of land it had acquired.

II. LMU Run for the Bay

As a way to increase the visibility of "Business Ethics Fortnight" both on and off campus, to stimulate community participation at a university event, to do something positive for the environment, to encourage students to form healthy habits early in life, to involve as many students, staff, and faculty from all corners of the university, and to find a way for everybody to have some fun in connection with an academic program, Business Ethics Fortnight also included the "LMU Run for the Bay." This 5 kilometer fun run/walk and 10 kilometer run was held on campus on Saturday, March 30th. The event was open to the general public as well as the campus community, and it attracted more than 350 runners and walkers. In the weeks before the run, free training sessions were offered to anyone interested by Bonnie Frankel, LMU's cross-country coach and a national Masters track champion.

The overall winner and top male finisher in the 5K was David Adams of Redondo Beach, who finished in 16:11. The top female finisher was Adrianne Trader of Hawthorne, with a time of 19:18. The overall winner and top male finisher in the 10K was Angelo Decollibus of Anaheim, who finished in 35:56. The top female finisher was Melinda Haeff of Los Angeles, with a time of 44:47.

An important motivation for this run was the belief that an educational program focusing on ethics and the environment should do more than just talk about such problems. Hence, this road race was viewed as an opportunity to do something positive by raising funds for a local environmental organization. Accordingly, the $1,000 proceeds of the race were donated to "Heal the Bay," an organization known for its long-standing commitment to improving the water quality of the Santa Monica Bay.

III. "L.A.'s Weirdest Biathlon"

The most unusual aspect of Business Ethics Fortnight, however, was what was called "L.A.'s Weirdest Biathlon"-a competition that combined the case competition and the 5K/10K run. As a way of encouraging students to take seriously the ancient maxim of "a sound mind in a sound body," there was a separate set of prizes for the student teams with the best combined score between the case competition and the run. The winners of the Emmons Prize also won the 10K biathlon. Two teams, neither one of which had advanced to the finals, tied for the 5K biathlon. One of these teams was made up of students from LMU's cross-country team, a fitting testimony to the ideal of the "student athlete."

IV. Concluding program

Business Ethics Fortnight concluded with a program on the evening of April 1, at which time the winners of the case competition and the biathlons were announced and a panel of speakers discussed issues related to "business, ethics and the environment." The speakers were: Rev. Thomas P. O'Malley, S.J., President of LMU; Roger Gorke, science and policy analyst of Heal the Bay; Eliza Jane Whitman, an environmental engineer from the Pasadena firm of Montgomery Watson; and Thomas White, LMU's Hilton Chair of Business Ethics.

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