Corporate Social Responsibililty (CSR)  Tags: corporate_social_responsibility csr corporate_citizenship business_ethics social_enterprise sustainability sustainable_development corporate_ethics  

Challenging Work and Corporate Responsibility Will Lure MBA Grads

STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS (June 2008) —A survey of 759 graduating MBAs at 11 top business schools reveals that the future business leaders rank corporate social responsibility high on their list of values, and they are willing to sacrifice a significant part of their salaries to find an employer whose thinking is in synch with their own.

The study by David Montgomery and Catherine Ramus of UC Santa Barbara examines the tradeoffs students are willing to make when selecting a potential employer. They found that intellectual challenge ranked number one in desirable job attributes, while money and location were essentially tied for second, each roughly 80 percent as important as the most important factor. “Had money not been ranked high, I would have thought I’d made a mistake,” says Montgomery, the Sebastian S. Kresge Professor of Marketing Strategy, Emeritus.

A reputation for ethical conduct and caring policies towards employees ranked high as well—75 percent as high as intellectual challenge and 95 percent as important as the financial package. “I was frankly surprised that ethics and caring about people came up so important as they did,” says study coauthor Montgomery of the Stanford Graduate School of Business. “This augurs well for the character of the 21st century MBA.”