A group of FASPE fellows visits the Birkenau Museum and views photographs of men, women, and children who were prisoners of war at Nazi Germany's Auschwitz extermination camp.
MBA students typically discuss business ethics in calm classrooms and consider examples of Enron and other headline-worthy corporate frauds. Although the era of the Holocaust is increasingly distant and full of searing ethical questions and vexing business dilemmas faced by industry leaders in Germany and Poland in the mid-20th century, MBAs are typically It does not appear in the curriculum.
But in a few weeks, a small group of MBA students and graduates of elite business schools will join several early career professionals on a flight to Germany and Poland for a fellowship that includes two weeks as an ethics detective. We will begin by reviewing ethical issues. The lessons of the Holocaust and the often codependent relationship between the Nazis and the business leaders of the day.
About the itinerary: Holiday home in Wannsee, outside of Berlin. In 1942, Nazi middle management and German government officials met to discuss and coordinate plans for the Nazis' final solution to exterminate Europe's Jews. The group will also visit the Brandenburg “Euthanasia” Center and Berlin's history museum “Topography of Terror”, and the trip will be completed by the Nazis' forced extermination of the former Germany, where 1.1 million people died during World War II. It will culminate with a visit to the concentration camp Auschwitz. II.
Fellowship offers a new way to look at business ethics
Rebecca Scott, program director for the nonprofit Auschwitz Fellowship for Professional Ethics (FASPE), which is organizing the trip, says it's tempting to describe the trip as a Holocaust education or genocide prevention program. . But that's beside the point.
“We're really using the past as a lens to examine modern professional ethics,” Scott says.
The FASPE Fellowship began in the summer of 2009 as a pilot program for law and medical fellows and has since expanded to include fellows in the fields of business, design, technology, and seminary. The Business Fellows program was introduced in 2015. The program has evolved into one of the leading ethics programs for graduate students and young professionals beginning their careers, offering 80 to 90 fellowships each year. Traveling students attend daily seminars and sometimes visit historically significant locations specific to their field of study.
Organizers say FASPE aims to draw on the lessons of the Holocaust to commemorate and reimagine it in a way that resonates with younger generations grappling with unique ethical challenges in the workplace.
“While passing on the lessons of the Holocaust is critical, we hope our colleagues will leave the program with deeper ethical reflection,” Scott says. “If you dig deep into history, you find that these decisions were made by ordinary people who were often not driven by ideology.”
A “life-changing” experience
Anne Tenbrunsel, Mendoza: “We bring together a group of people who are really interested in ethical behavior and show them how organizations, systems and individuals themselves can be misguided.”
This year's trip will include 14 Business Fellows, a diverse group of young professionals and MBA students from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard Business School, Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, and more. They will travel with fellows from law and technology and design, and as a group they will share how ethical standards differ in their respective fields, Scott said.
This year, FASPE's Business Fellows program will be led by Max Bazerman, professor of management at Harvard Business School, and Anne Tenbrunsel, professor of business ethics at the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame.
Tenbrunsel, who took part in the trip for the first time this year, said she expected it to be a “life-changing” experience for herself and her colleagues.
“We bring together a group of people who are really interested in ethical behavior and show them how organizations, systems and individuals themselves can be misguided,” she says.
“Working with people like that and really focusing on educating and motivating the next generation was very appealing to me.”
Fellows want to prioritize ethics in their careers
Kandasi Griffith, a 2024 fellow who recently graduated from Duke University's Fuqua School, decided to apply for the FASPE Fellowship after continuing to feel frustrated by the difficult intersection of ethics in global health programs and social impact investing. did. A self-proclaimed “Model UN nerd” since her high school days, Griffith has dedicated her life to improving global health for women and children in West Africa and specializes in helping women of color make an impact in their ventures. Started her own consulting company.
As she prepares to begin her post-graduation career at Social Finance, an investment and impact advisory nonprofit, she is ensuring she has a framework for making financially and ethically sound decisions. I was thinking of wearing it.
“No matter what field we go into, there are many privileges and great power in earning an MBA,” she says. “I wanted tools to help us have these difficult conversations in the workplace, like how do we create a system that is fair but fair and prioritizes those who have traditionally not had access to funding? ”
Julian Gluck, FASPE 2024 Business Fellow: “Having served in combat aviation and the military, ethics are very important to me.”
Joining her on her trip is Julian Gluck, a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and completing his first year as an MBA student at Harvard Business School. He will be interning at McKinsey's London office this summer and will also serve in the U.S. Air Force Reserve.
During his time as an active duty B-52 bomber pilot, he flew combat missions in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, and was also deployed to the Indo-Pacific region.
“Having served in combat aviation and uniformed service, ethics are very important to me,” Gluck said.
He expects the program to be a transformative experience for him, partly for personal reasons. Half of his family immigrated from central Europe in the late 19th century and his early 20th century to escape persecution and find a better life in the United States. I am also looking forward to taking the next program. Delve deep into ethics by analyzing how leaders made business decisions in the mid-20th century.
Gluck said: “This speaks volumes about the agency of industrial leaders, the inextricable link between public and private, government and commerce, and the responsibility we all have to make more moral choices for ourselves. This will be a powerful lesson for employers, shareholders, and communities. ”
Case studies of companies complicit in Holocaust atrocities
In fact, business leaders of the time played a vital role in helping the Nazi regime achieve its goal of the so-called “Final Solution.” German companies were involved in manufacturing weapons for the Nazis, and major banks helped move Jewish assets into German hands.
One example discussed in a previous visit was the Topf Corporation case study. This case study examines how the German company Topf & Sons built the crematoriums for most of Germany's major concentration camps.
Tenbrunsel, of Mendoza College, said she plans to speak to students about the rationalizations business leaders of the time used to distance themselves from the human harm their decisions caused to Jews and others. Stated. In a class she teaches in Mendoza called “Fundamentals of Ethical Business Conduct,'' she often brings up the example of Albert Speer, Hitler's personal architect, who claims he was Hitler's manager. That's why I told myself, “Problems related to humans are not problems.'' It’s part of his responsibility,” she says.
“His words really resonated with my students,” she says. “For them, even within an organization, they can see how functions and jobs are fragmented, which can obscure the big picture, at least on certain parts of the issue. There could be a rationalization that I am not responsible.”
FASPE fellows visit the railroad tracks where tens of thousands of Jews were transported from Berlin to concentration camps.
A lifelong community focused on ethics.
FASPE Business Fellow Nina Bondre, a soon-to-be graduate of Wharton's MBA program and a certified orthotist, says she has seen up close the many inequalities in the U.S. health care system throughout her career. Before she enrolled in business school, she worked as a clinical educator in her specialty, and after graduating from Wharton, she plans to participate in a leadership development rotation program at medical device company Medtronic.
“My personal challenge is how can I do what is best for my patients while still running a healthy business and continuing to see patients the next day,” she says.
Her goal is to serve as a liaison between clinics and businesses to improve healthcare for underserved populations. She believes that having a strong ethical compass is essential for this type of role, and the ethical conflicts that may arise in her post-MBA role.
“I want to use my FASPE experience to develop these skills and create a community of people who are also interested in these topics and can help me navigate situations like this,” she says .
Vibrant alumni community
Ms. Bondle said she looks forward to joining the active alumni community of past FASPE Fellows around the world once her FASPE Fellowship concludes.
There are more than 830 FASPE Fellows worldwide, and that number grows each year with groups of 80 to 90 Fellows. About 150 people attend FASPE's annual reunion, many of whom keep in touch online, FASPE's Scott said.
Research from FASPE's vast alumni network shows that the program provides long-term benefits for participants. According to the survey, 90% of survey participants agreed that their fellowship experience made them consider ethical considerations in their day-to-day decision-making, and 84% said they had conversations about ethics with colleagues and colleagues after the fellowship. I reported that it has started.
Scott emphasizes that this is the ultimate goal of the program: to build a community of like-minded professionals who prioritize and think critically about ethics in the workplace.
“It’s not just a two-week trip,” Scott says. “We want to build this community and professional network that people can rely on throughout their careers.”
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