AACSB Expectations

AACSB International—The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business continues to enhance its long-standing support for ethics education for all business students Although AACSB has insisted on the inclusion of ethics in business curricula for many years, it has responded to recent revelations of corporate malfeasance by searching for ways to strengthen its role in preparing graduates for management careers.

Ethics education was an area for heightened attention as the AACSB Blue Ribbon Committee on Accreditation Quality (BRC) began its work in July of 2000 to update and enhance the accreditation standards and processes. The revision process benefited from considerable comment from faculty members and administrators at member institutions throughout the world. The new standards were approved on April 25, 2003, by a nearly unanimous vote of accredited AACSB members.

The new standards reaffirm the importance of ethics education for business graduates and emphasize its position among curricular requirements. The Committee gave ethics education more prominent placement in the standards to make clear the Association’s belief of its importance in business education. Ethics education is called for in the general knowledge and skills portion of the standards for undergraduates, and in the management-specific portion of the standards for undergraduate and master’s students. (See Standard 15.)

Why won’t AACSB International require a course in ethics for all business programs? 

Also included in the new standards is a criterion for eligibility that requires each school to “establish expectations for ethical behavior by administrators, faculty, and students.”  Schools will do this with codes of conduct, values statements, honor codes, procedures for handling allegations of misconduct, and other mechanisms. This provision recognizes that education takes place, not just in the classroom, but also through observation of the actions of the educational institution’s participants. (See criterion E under Eligibility Procedures.) Related to this criterion is the requirement that faculty and student participants “operate with integrity in their dealings” with other participants in the learning process. (See Standard 13 and Standard 14.  Also see Expectations Regarding Student-Faculty Interaction.)

Separate from work with the accreditation standards, AACSB’s New Issues Committee, a sub-committee of the Board of Directors, established ethics education as its highest priority in 2002-03. It created the Ethics Education Task Force (EETF) to identify potential enhancements for business education and accreditation review of ethics education. A preliminary draft of the EETF report has been issued for member feedback.

In short, AACSB International recognizes and accepts its role as a standard setter and facilitator in business education. It will continue its strong support for ethics education for all business students.