On Personal Values in Business Education

The UN-backed Principles of Responsible Management Education, along with other similar frameworks, promote the values of global social responsibility and provide guidance on how to advance these values through management education. While there is little to no debate about what the universal terminal values are (desired end-states like peace, justice, and gender equality), it is less clear if and how educators should address learners’ personal instrumental values (desired qualities of behavior like honesty or audacity).

Here are three simple principles that I believe responsible business schools should follow in respect to their students’ personal values:

Do Not Harm. As John Dewey said, “Education is not preparation for life, education is life itself.” Experiences at school will either enhance, erode, or make no difference to students’ trust in values. Undermining students’ faith in fairness, or appreciation of kindness and respect, is perhaps the worst thing a school can do. Hypocrisy and tokenism in respect to values are likely to lead to disenchantment about values in general. In a brilliant reflection on corporate values, Donald Clark aptly exposes common corporate value hypocrisy. I believe that the same logic applies to education. Educational institutions must exemplify the values they put forward and apply them consistently in all aspects of their activity (from strategy to faculty and student management), otherwise they face the consequences – students' shaken trust in the school and, what’s worse, in values in general.

Do Not Impinge on Authenticity. Except for a few unquestionable instrumental values that an inclusive educational institution may legitimately promote among its learners (e.g., fairness, respect, curiosity), the proclamation of anything else will either be a purely symbolic act or an impingement on students’ authenticity. Values like openness, authenticity, and inclusivity are always legitimate because they don’t impinge on anything, and inclusivity embraces everything, even exclusivity.

Reveal, Challenge, and Test. A famous and accurate statement by E.M. Forster, “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” can be transformed into “How do I know what I value until I see what I choose?” Values are about priorities (success or well-being, order or freedom, prestige or humanitarianism etc.). But many don’t want to see it this way and that’s why it is common to hear business school students sincerely wishing to work for socially responsible luxury brands or something of this kind. And value-based forced-choice situations don’t present themselves too often in life and when they do, self-serving rationalization typically relieves psychological discomfort.

Education should provide such developmental experiences. Educational environments can and should be safe spaces for students to make their values explicit to themselves and others, to defend and justify these values when challenged, and to test their capacity to commit to these values in action (as the proverb goes, “a man is not honest simply because he never had a chance to steal”). Providing a challenging yet safe environment, rather than direct instruction, seems to be the best way to go. As they say at MIT, it is not important what we cover in class; it is important what students discover. Personal values are no exception. That is why glossing over ‘fluffy’ topics in class, avoiding controversies, sweeping disagreements under the rug, and protecting feelings at all costs should be replaced by debate, critical thinking about values, and leaning by doing, especially outside of campus and beyond the comfort zone.

To conclude, it is important to acknowledge that students' value development is part of a broader, ongoing process, where higher education is neither the beginning, nor the end, nor the sole influencer of their moral compass. Students begin their higher education already at an advanced stage of moral development, with personal values well established, even if implicitly. These values and their strength vary across diverse student populations (some enter business schools and graduate convinced that they cannot afford values). For these reasons, the elevation of students’ values and character development cannot and should not be the primary purpose of management education. Yet, education is life, and factors like assimilation, role modeling, and peer influence will impact students’ personal values, even if unintentionally. Therefore, it seems relevant to articulate and implement some basic principles of value engagement in education and put them in in practice. After all, a sustainable and equitable world can only emerge if it's rooted in the strong personal values.