Dean's Column

A Commitment to Lead

I share concerns about the far-reaching management issues that the Enron story has exposed and am determined to redouble our course and teaching efforts in such areas as leadership, values, ethics, and decision making.

BY DEAN ROBERT JOSS

THE MANAGED INSTITUTION is society’s chosen instrument for the best way to produce and deliver its goods and services, both public and private. Management—as embodied in effective, ethical, disciplined, high-achieving teams of managers—is responsible for how well these institutions perform. Worldwide, the difference between outstanding and poor institutional performance can be measured in hundreds of millions of jobs and trillions of dollars of income and wealth gained or lost. It is the responsibility of the managers within those institutions to deliver their performance.

Much management skill is learned and developed through on-the-job experience. But there is an important body of knowledge that serves as an essential and lifelong foundation for anyone seeking a satisfying professional career involving management.

Creating and disseminating that body of knowledge is a critical part of the mission of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where we aim to lead the world in the promotion of learning about management—about what it is, what it does, how it can become better; how to recognize it, develop it, hold it accountable.

The vast majority of our alumni recognize this, but occasionally we hear from some of you who believe management education might have taken a wrong turn. In recent months, I’ve heard from several of you who are embarrassed by the bad publicity that professional management is getting in the wake of the collapse of the Enron Corp. Some of you are disturbed that a valued teacher, a former dean of the school, has been criticized publicly for his role on the company’s board of directors, and you want to know what the School’s leadership is planning to do about it.

Obviously, something went very wrong at Enron and needs to be thoroughly investigated and reviewed. This is happening now—through the courts, the media, and the Congress. I have no doubt that this investigation will be thorough and instructive. As Dean of our School, I am not going to prejudge anyone on the basis of media speculation and certainly am not going to prejudge Bob Jaedicke—a person I have known for nearly 37 years to be of the highest character and competence. Bob will undoubtedly be in the public spotlight for some time and will be explaining his role on the audit committee and the board. For me, his professional career and record have earned him the right to our patience and consideration before making judgments. I have read with interest a transcript of his recent testimony before Congress—I suggest it to anyone interested in this matter—and I hope the GSB community will join me in, at least, suspending judgment until the whole story has been told.

That said, I share concerns about the far-reaching management issues that the Enron story has exposed and am determined to redouble our course and teaching efforts in such areas as leadership, values, ethics, and decision making. Stanford Business School is one of those exceptional institutions that makes a critical difference through our impact and leadership. We have a required pre-term course in ethics, and issues addressing ethics are then found in many courses throughout the curriculum. We also offer a number of courses under the subheading of “leadership” in the elective choices. One of our accounting professors is already planning a session to deconstruct some of Enron’s practices.

I assure you that issues of integrity, values, and ethics in decision making are at the forefront of what we do here. My own seminar, “Issues in Leadership,” dwelled heavily on issues of integrity and values throughout the readings and discussions, as I am confident the students would report to you. We have accelerated faculty and fundraising efforts to expand our recently developed Center for Social Innovation, which is developing teaching and research around issues of nonprofit management as well as ethics.

I am committed along with our faculty to raising the awareness and importance of social responsibility and ethics throughout the curriculum and the experiences that students have while they are here at Stanford.