Just as medical students need to learn bedside manner to be better doctors, a new initiative at CU-Â鶹¹ÙÍø's Leeds School of Business is striving to help tomorrow's business leaders grasp the overall impact business has on society.
Leading the business and society initiative is Robert Kolb, who this fall was appointed assistant dean for business and society at CU-Â鶹¹ÙÍø's Leeds School of Business.
"The goal of this initiative is to help instill a deeper understanding of exactly what business contributes to society. In our society today, I believe there is a certain hostility toward business, but I also think there is a lack of understanding," Kolb said.
"Businesses do a great deal for society, including providing our food, shelter and clothing, as well as almost all other material goods and services. They essentially produce the entire material substrate of culture. In contemporary society, corporations increasingly make or sponsor the discovery of new knowledge and generate the ideas for change," he said.
But in society as a whole and education in particular, business generally is addressed in financial terms, and rarely in societal terms.
"We want our students to get a better understanding of not only how business fits into society, but also to understand that businesses have a social function that they can perform well or poorly, and that their social conduct has a great impact on both their financial success and their fulfillment of their social function," Kolb said.
While the initiative is still in its infancy, the Leeds School has already made curriculum changes with a long-term goal of getting students to consider the impact business has on society and that society has on business. For starters, undergraduate students are now required to take two courses examining the connection between
business and society, while MBA students must take one course.
"This is intended to be a fundamental part of our students' education, rather than just a couple of elective courses," Kolb said.
One course being offered this semester as part of the business and society curriculum is "Marketing's Role in the Socially Responsible Firm." Taught by Senior Instructor Steven Engel, the class focuses on marketing's role in helping make companies profitable, while also serving society.
"In general marketing courses, we teach basic strategies necessary to make a company profitable. In this particular class we study how to make a company profitable, while also minimizing its effect on the environment," Engel said.
A major component of the course requires students to market an "environmentally friendly" product to students on campus. To do this, they have to choose a product that is already offered to students and then strike a deal to work with the product's manufacturer to increase its sales through a marketing plan, to be produced and executed by the student. Engel said his students are implementing marketing strategies to persuade consumers to use their purchasing decisions to make the world a better place.
While some may contend that much of the current popularity of teaching business ethics and business and society courses will disappear when the economy recovers, Kolb said that will not happen with the Leeds School initiative.
"I think society is always transforming in regard to what is expected of businesses in society, and being aware of this is essential to being successful in the business world," he said.
The initiative also includes the Japha Symposium on Professional and Business Ethics and the Leeds Summit Award for Social Impact, both to be held on Oct. 23.
Kolb brings a unique perspective to the classroom, having earned two doctorates from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill -- one in finance and the other in philosophy. He taught finance at the University of Miami from 1983 to 1995 and from 1982 to the present he has authored or co-authored more than 25 finance texts on topics including futures, options, financial derivatives, investments, corporate finance and financial institutions.
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