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A survey taken by more than 800 MBAs
from 11 leading North American and European schools found a
significant number of them were willing to give up some financial
benefits to work for an ethical, socially-responsible organization.
The study surprised its authors,
Professor David Montgomery of Stanford and Catherine Ramus of
University of California Santa Barbara.
"We were quite surprised by these
results," says Montgomery, the Sebastian S. Kresge Professor of
Marketing Strategy, Emeritus, at the Stanford Graduate School of
Business and dean of the School of Business at Singapore Management
University.
The results also stunned the authors
because ‘intellectual challenge’ topped the list as the most
important attribute for MBAs in their job choice decision. However,
the financial package was only 80 per cent as important as the
intellectual challenge for graduates.
What also surprised the study authors
was that ‘reputation for ethics’ and ‘caring about employees’ both
rose to the top third of the list of 14 attributes, making it about
77 per cent as important as the top criterion of intellectual
challenge.
"The implication of our study is that
CSR issues are well ‘built in’ to MBA job preferences. Witness the
high ranking for caring for employees and ethical behaviour,"
Montgomery tells Axiom News.
"People prior to this study have
suggested that socially-responsible companies will be rewarded, but
prior to this study no one has ever calibrated it in the context of
overall job choice."
"This strikes me as being terribly
significant," Montgomery says.
The study also found that more than 97
per cent of the MBAs in the sample said they were willing to forgo
financial benefits to work for an organization with a better
reputation for corporate social responsibility and ethics. On
average, MBAs were willing to forgo 14 per cent of their expected
income.
"There were no previous empirical
studies that indicated how important these additional job
choice-related factors might be," said Montgomery.
Montgomery says conventional wisdom
dictated the major incentives to join a company were merely
financial. The implications, he says, are significant.
"Everyone thinks they know that MBAs
are avaricious and greedy," Montgomery says in a press release.
"And while no one is claiming that
they are perfect, it turns out that MBAs are willing to forgo a
significant per cent of their income to be more moral across a
number of dimensions." —Axiom News
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