Stanford University Graduate School of Business

Stanford University Graduate School of Business takes a multi-layered approach to business ethics. It includes ethics in their core curriculum primarily through two required courses. All students are exposed to five, two-hour sessions devoted to ethical analysis during the pre-term sessions. Students are required to take a course, which has three principal objectives: to consider an important set of ethics systems; increase the precision with which students think about, discuss, and practice ethics; and provide opportunities to apply ethics systems to business problems.

The Stanford program also provides students with an opportunity to take additional elective classes to support particular areas of interest. Electives include Social Entrepreneurship, Ethics and Global Business, Ethical Issues in the Biotech Industry, The Business World: Moral and Spiritual Inquiry Through Literature, and International Comparisons of Corporate Governance Systems.

The Stanford curriculum also offers visiting guest lectures, discussions and brown bag lunches on ethics topics.

To bring the topic to the student’s daily life, Stanford has a student Honor Code. Dean Joss states, “We want to underscore the importance of the trust that consumers, employees and communities place in corporations and the responsibilities that accompany that trust. We want to convince students of the link between ethical behavior and long-term success as a leader.”