vol. XXI no. 2
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Olson foresees CR developing and maturing just as has happened with ethics and compliance. “Not that long ago no one had heard of an ethics and compliance officer. Today, of course, it is an executive-level position within most major corporations.
“At present there are a handful of C-level corporate responsibility officers whose number will grow in coming years.” The key will be to cultivate CR leaders who will inspire what Olson characterizes as “a revolution in thinking – instilling a cross-functional mindset in which driving down costs, reducing risk, increasing revenue, and building goodwill and reputation is constantly top of mind.”
Robinson is addressing the challenge with a slate of offerings within its MBA curriculum and the College’s new
Executive Doctorate in Business program. They include:
• A course in managing corporate integrity that brings together students from Robinson and Georgia State’s College of Law to grapple with the issues they’ll face in tandem. The genesis of the idea came from the realworld experiences of senior business professionals and experienced corporate counsel who reported that it took them several years to learn how to integrate legal, ethical, and business thinking.
• A proposed concentration in corporate responsibility offered in conjunction with the College’s MBA program. Students will earn the concentration in addition to their designated major by completing four CR courses and undertaking a semester-long corporate practicum – a hallmark of the Robinson experience.
• A course in the third year of the Executive Doctorate in Business program in which participants examine ethical dilemmas in the context of personal and professional value systems and the role of both in shaping the courage of business leaders to act in responsible ways.
Just as CR must be cross-functional within an enterprise, Olson asserts that it should be incorporated throughout business studies. “Issues do not spontaneously spring forth at the executive level; they first arise in practice areas. Business schools need to do a better job of preparing our students for the corporate responsibility challenges
that they’ll face throughout their careers – whether they’re newly
minted MBA graduates, midcareer professionals, or senior executives."
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Steve Olson is director of the Center for Ethics and Corporate Responsibility, a unit of the Robinson College of Business since 2007. Cofounded by Olson
in 1993 with the support of Atlanta’s business community, the center was the first such organization of its kind in the United States. In the years since the
center has become global in reach, providing a forum where businesses and other institutions work together to promote ethics and corporate responsibility.
Olson earned a Ph.D. in ethics and society from Emory University, where his doctoral dissertation on the ethics of leadership won the Fredric M. Jablin Award
for Best Dissertation in Leadership, awarded by the International Leadership Association. He also holds a master of arts in religion from Yale University.
For more information about Robinson’s Center for Ethics and Corporate Responsibility, please visit robinson.gsu.edu/ethics.
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