Smith School Hosts Inaugural “Ethics Variety
Show”
MBA Students Take Center Stage
Where do issues like drugs in the workplace, insider trading, off-shoring,
and credit card debt meet Shakespeare? For more than 100 first-year MBA students
in the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, ethical
business issues and dramatic performance collided on center stage on a Saturday
night at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, May 3, 2008.
The daily news surrounds us with tales of scandal, global pressures on
traditional prerogatives’ and visions of environmental doom and gloom. In the
midst of all this, business leaders must make choices that balance stakeholder
desires and concerns. These issues are brought to life through projects, guest
speakers and student-created dramatic performances in the required MBA course,
“Culture, Ethics and Communication” (BUSI 605) – part of Smith’s new MBA
curriculum, launched in fall 2007.
“Academically, we want students in the course to have a grasp of, and
experience emotionally, the many difficult ethical choices that managers
confront in global business,” said Bob Krapfel, academic director of Smith’s MBA
program and associate professor of marketing. “In terms of communication, we
want them to explore and develop their talents in ways that are more engaging
than just another PowerPoint presentation.”
All first-year MBA students split themselves up into 10 groups, each with
about 12-14 students. Along with the play, the course entailed a series of guest
speakers who talked about different areas of culture, ethics, corporate social
responsibility, and/or communication. There were also role-play exercises, a
corporate social audit paper, and the study of how one particular 19th century
play has implications for the current business environment.
Why take acting, writing and directing classes in business school? Well,
course instructor Steve Loeb, Ernst & Young Alumni Professor of Accounting and
Business Ethics, said that teachers have been using role playing for years as an
educational technique and this just takes the method to the next level. “This
really taps into communications – written and oral. Plays help us view both
ethics and culture in a unique way. It was a lot of work, but in the end the
students had a wonderful educational experience. Years from now they will look
back at their MBA experience and remember The First Annual Smith School Ethics
Variety Show!”
On the night of the performance there was electricity in the air and the
audience laughed, cried, and laughed so hard they cried! In one particularly
humorous play titled “Generally Rejected Accounting Principles,” writers Annika
Shogren and Benjamin Hatten took on a number of issues including the
internationalization of accounting principles, integration of foreign employees
into the workplace, disability issues, and gender issues. A very clever take on
Shakespeare – “Romeo and Juling” – had a heart wrenching finale, with Juling
ending it all with a tragic swipe of her credit card to her neck after falling
far into debt from the temptation of luxury.
“The Ethics Variety Show was one of the best evenings I have spent with MBA
students at the Smith School of Business,” said Senior Associate Dean Anand
Anandalingam. “I have no doubt that the students learned a lot from this very
different pedagogy to deal with culture, ethics and communication. The skits
were clever, humorous and poignant, and the students did a fantastic job writing
the plays, acting in them, and also designing the sets and the music. What a
creative lot! Of all the experiences I have had in the Smith School, this is one
I will remember for a very long time.”
“I think it was a great lesson in teamwork – getting 14 MBAs to work
together, be coordinated, and be in the same place is a very challenging task,”
said Adam Weiner, a lead actor in one of the more dramatic plays, “My Dad’s
Heart,” which dealt with age discrimination. “I think from the rest of the
class, my main takeaways were better understanding of some of the ethical issues
that face people and companies and a number of ways in which they have been
dealt with.”
The 10 plays were judged by Smith alumni Bruce Dubinsky, a managing director
at Duff & Phelps Corporation; A. Thomas Finnell, a managing director at Invotex
Group; and Alan Jacobs, Esq., a retired corporate securities attorney formerly
with Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue, Heller Ehrman LLP and the Securities Exchange
Commission.
“When we started practicing the play on stage at the Clarice Smith Center,
that’s when it really got interesting,” said Karan Kaul, who played the
whistleblower in the play “Integrity,” which was the judges’ choice for the play
that best deals with ethical issues. Kaul said that they wanted the audience to
see that the current state of society is one in which a whistleblower can end up
in poverty and the white collar criminals – in this case two employees guilty of
a major accounting scandal and one of them also of insider trading – can end up
with a mere slap on the wrist and millions of dollars in off-shore accounts.
“I was in a very international team,” Kelly Liu, who played the CEO in “Rice
Follies,” the judges’ choice for the play that reflects the best overall
performance by the team of MBA students. “My teammates came from U.S., South
Korea, Taiwan, and China, which is one of the reasons that we choose outsourcing
as our play’s theme. We reversed the current outsourcing direction to make the
play more interesting and to think what if this happens in the emerging markets
after a few years later? Will they just copy the current outsourcing model or
will they think of other factors to make their decisions?”
“Rice Follies” takes place in the year 2080 in a world where China has become
the premier economic and political superpower. “However, there has been a great
deal of change in the demographics and the climate of the world,” explains Liu.
“Due to family-planning policies, China now has an extreme shortage of labor.
The USA (whose economy had previously been stifled by a central planning regime)
with the combination of its extremely large labor pool (nearly half of the
world’s population) and lack of government regulation (no child labor laws,
minimum wage, or other similar worker’s rights) has been targeted by Chinese
firms who have capitalized on the cheap labor and lack of government regulations
to reduce the cost of their operations. The company, one of the world’s largest
agricultural companies in China, is now contemplating whether to participate in
the increasingly prevalent choice to move some of its rice-farming operations to
America,” says Liu of the play, which was done almost entirely in Chinese with
English subtitles projected on a screen.
“I agreed with the judges that the 'Rice Follies' was brilliant. It was funny
and sad and made its point in a most entertaining way,” said Krapfel. “The
Ethics Variety Show far exceeded my expectations. The pool of talent in our
student body is wonderful, and their willingness to take a chance and display
that talent in a public performance of this type makes me proud to work with
them.”
“I was happy to be able to discuss and present material in class outside of
the realm of cases, PowerPoint presentations, and classroom discussions,” said
Donna Lin who wrote the play “Recruiting at Trrifff University” with Noam Levin,
which dealt with questionable recruiting practices in sports programs in higher
education and subsequent practices for treating student athletes. “It was a
creative venture that allowed groups to express a little of their own
perspectives on ethical behavior.”
The 10 plays included:
- Medicinal Mayhem
- Corporate Espionage in Three Acts
- Retirement Ethics
- Rice Follies
- Romeo and Juling
- My Dad’s Heart
- Humanity: The Other Benefit of Globalization
- Generally Rejected Accounting Principles
- Integrity
- Recruiting at Trrifff University
Congratulations to all first-year Smith School students: the actors,
designers, directors, dramaturges, playwrights, stage managers, team chairs, and
team vice chairs on a job well done!
Alissa Arford-Leyl, Office of Marketing Communications
