Businessmen and women need to exhibit both their creative and competitive spirits to succeed in their aggressive industry. The ultimate goal of many in the field is to prove they are capable of managing their company while staying ahead of the often unpredictable changes in the economy. In light of the recent financial meltdown, many young students poised to begin careers in business are interested in learning less about profit models and more about ways to ethically deliver responsible and sustainable companies, Reuter reports. One manifestation of this new attitude appears at the Harvard Business School where more than half of the 2009 graduating class took a newly-coined MBA Oath encouraging graduates to "strive to create sustainable economic, social, and environmental prosperity worldwide." Bruce Kogut, director of the Sanford C. Bernstein Center for Leadership and Ethics at the Columbia Business School told the news source that the faculty is beginning to tackle lessons learned from the recent crisis. "There is this issue of 'Are we turning out people who have unrealistic expectations of their worth and the compensation they should receive?'" While these trends are encouraging, experts in ethics say only time will tell if future business leaders uphold their oaths. The AFL-CIO reports that the median salary for a CEO in the U.S. is $643,846 per year.  |