Mission Statement

 

The Center for Ethics and Business is an arm of the College of Business Administration at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. Our mission is to encourage the discussion of ethical issues in business by offering innovative programs that help bridge the gap between the academic and business worlds. We prefer activities that are more "practical" than "theoretical" and that ask participants to take an active role. We constantly seek ways to use new technologies to facilitate communication and to promote the importance of ethics in business.

*Our primary activity is currently "Business Ethics Fortnight," a two-week event held every April that includes: intramural and intercollegiate student team presentation competitions and a 5K/10K fund-raiser for a local environmental organization. Students assemble teams, choose a contemporary issue in business ethics, and make a presentation about the legal, financial and ethical dimensions of the case to panels of judges, comprised mainly of men and women from area businesses. There are cash prizes for the competition, including a separate set of prizes for "L.A.'s Weirdest Biathlon," our optional combined academic/athletic contest designed after the ancient maxim: "a sound mind in a sound body." We have a special commitment to involve students from schools that traditionally lack the resources to support involvement in such programs.

*We offer an educational website (www.ethicsandbusiness.org) that provides various tools that aim to help people wrestle with ethical dilemmas in business.

*We work with the Southern California Business Ethics Roundtable and the Ethics Officer Association to find ways to assist area corporate ethics officers with the practical challenges of administering corporate ethics programs.

*Our goals for the future include: various tracks of the presentation competition (cyber, corporate, pre-college), more frequent public programs, and faculty development programs related to integrating ethics into standard business courses.