Wonder how many of those answers would change if the questions were asked during a job interview?

My experience with MBAs from the best places invading a company is as follows:
1. Boost the stock price
a. do this by laying people off thus reducing expenses.
b. dump the sales force or reduce their commissions and replace it with marketing.
1. This has a result of insulating the company from any negative comments from customers since these comments are always made to salesmen.
c. Hire a "modern" accounting firm that understands "nuance" and is hip to the real world.

They then hire a bunch of women with MBAs to cover these tracks so the company looks compassionate. Donations to charities are pubicized.

No one ever talked about making a product or service better for customers or duties to shareholders.

Recent corporate accounting scandals demonstrate the _need_ for prioritizing honest disclosure.

However, to argue that current collegiate opinion is to blame is a bit of a stretch. If we could pin the scandals to a survey, it would have to be a survey of those at the controls. Was this survey given twenty years ago, and were the results similar? If not, the survey doesn't show a causal link.

That said, the survey underscores the need for a shift in priorities.

Sadly, the more likely outcome is a criticism of capitalism and greater priority on options 1, 3, and 4.

The fungibility of accounting will just shore up the rejection of absolute truths. If we can trust an audit, then what truth can there be in financial markets? Postmodernism comes to Wall Street...

p.s. Let's get some more comments up here. I mean, I know there are *thousands* of people reading this what with Instapundit's link and all...

I didn't go to college, but instead joined the working world right out of high school. Every job I've ever had whether it was flipping burgers, inoculating cattle, feeding paper into room-sized laser printers, programming mainframes, or selling hardware and software - my approach has always been that the Customer is King. Make them happy and they'll keep coming back.

I didn't find any ethical questions about the customer in that survey. Just a bunch of meaningless hoo-ha.

The values we learn in college have to make it through the 20 or so years of corporate culture to land that executive position. This is dog eat dog. And these dogs are not going to learn a new trick when they are on top. The only values in capatalism are $, $ and $.

What does not kill us makes us stronger and what makes us stronger will kill us.

Monadire

I just read a few essays by James Schall, a Jesuit and a professor at Georgetown. He writes:

"As a professor, I would be humiliated if one of my students found himself fifteen years from now...having to admit in a serious conversation that neither in his college years nor any time since had he read anything of genuine importance. But the fact is that few opportunities exist for the careful reading of Aristotle or Saint Thomas, even if we should want to. A thousand other claims and requirements inevitably prevent most students from even thinking such a thing would be a good idea."

Pre-eminent among the claims and requirements is a steady diet of pychobabble and indoctrination into what I call the New State Religion. Only devotees of a man-made religion could believe that diversity is, in and of itself, a virtue. Schools (chiefly the government schools) are producing sheep who have been given pat answers to deep questions and who come out of school completely incapable of engaging in philosophical reflection. We're in big trouble.