CHAPTER 5: Assessing MBA Attitudes About Business and Society: Implications for Business Education

The Aspen Institute’s Business and Society Program (Aspen BSP) opened its doors in January 1998. Since then, understanding the role of management education in preparing the next generation of leaders to tackle the social and environmental challenges faced by business has been at the heart of our mission to catalyze fresh thinking, teaching, and research at the intersection of business needs and social concerns.

Business schools then, as now, were producing well over 100,000 MBA graduates each year in the United States, accounting for roughly one out of every four master’s degrees granted annually. Competition among the schools was intense. Issues of business magazines with the latest rankings of business schools were flying off the shelves as students around the world tried to figure out how they could best turn their expensive graduate education into earnings. In 1998, these business school rankings tended to give most weight to two factors: GMAT scores of accepted students and salaries of graduates. These metrics were easy to plug into formulas for success, but they told us nothing about how well the schools were preparing students to be financial, social, and environmental stewards. Nor did they tell us how business school education influenced students’ thinking about how business should operate within society.