Smith School Hosts Inaugural “Ethics Variety Show”

Where do issues like drugs in the workplace, insider trading, off-shoring, and credit card debt meet Shakespeare? For more than 100 first-year MBA students in the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, ethical business issues and dramatic performance collided on center stage on a Saturday night at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, May 3, 2008.

The daily news surrounds us with tales of scandal, global pressures on traditional prerogatives’ and visions of environmental doom and gloom. In the midst of all this, business leaders must make choices that balance stakeholder desires and concerns. These issues are brought to life through projects, guest speakers and student-created dramatic performances in the required MBA course, “Culture, Ethics and Communication” (BUSI 605) – part of Smith’s new MBA curriculum, launched in fall 2007.

“Academically, we want students in the course to have a grasp of, and experience emotionally, the many difficult ethical choices that managers confront in global business,” said Bob Krapfel, academic director of Smith’s MBA program and associate professor of marketing. “In terms of communication, we want them to explore and develop their talents in ways that are more engaging than just another PowerPoint presentation.”

All first-year MBA students split themselves up into 10 groups, each with about 12-14 students. Along with the play, the course entailed a series of guest speakers who talked about different areas of culture, ethics, corporate social responsibility, and/or communication. There were also role-play exercises, a corporate social audit paper, and the study of how one particular 19th century play has implications for the current business environment.

Why take acting, writing and directing classes in business school? Well, course instructor Steve Loeb, Ernst & Young Alumni Professor of Accounting and Business Ethics, said that teachers have been using role playing for years as an educational technique and this just takes the method to the next level. “This really taps into communications – written and oral. Plays help us view both ethics and culture in a unique way. It was a lot of work, but in the end the students had a wonderful educational experience. Years from now they will look back at their MBA experience and remember The First Annual Smith School Ethics Variety Show!”

On the night of the performance there was electricity in the air and the audience laughed, cried, and laughed so hard they cried! In one particularly humorous play titled “Generally Rejected Accounting Principles,” writers Annika Shogren and Benjamin Hatten took on a number of issues including the internationalization of accounting principles, integration of foreign employees into the workplace, disability issues, and gender issues. A very clever take on Shakespeare – “Romeo and Juling” – had a heart wrenching finale, with Juling ending it all with a tragic swipe of her credit card to her neck after falling far into debt from the temptation of luxury.

“The Ethics Variety Show was one of the best evenings I have spent with MBA students at the Smith School of Business,” said Senior Associate Dean Anand Anandalingam. “I have no doubt that the students learned a lot from this very different pedagogy to deal with culture, ethics and communication. The skits were clever, humorous and poignant, and the students did a fantastic job writing the plays, acting in them, and also designing the sets and the music. What a creative lot! Of all the experiences I have had in the Smith School, this is one I will remember for a very long time.”

“I think it was a great lesson in teamwork – getting 14 MBAs to work together, be coordinated, and be in the same place is a very challenging task,” said Adam Weiner, a lead actor in one of the more dramatic plays, “My Dad’s Heart,” which dealt with age discrimination. “I think from the rest of the class, my main takeaways were better understanding of some of the ethical issues that face people and companies and a number of ways in which they have been dealt with.”

The 10 plays were judged by Smith alumni Bruce Dubinsky, a managing director at Duff & Phelps Corporation; A. Thomas Finnell, a managing director at Invotex Group; and Alan Jacobs, Esq., a retired corporate securities attorney formerly with Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue, Heller Ehrman LLP and the Securities Exchange Commission.

“When we started practicing the play on stage at the Clarice Smith Center, that’s when it really got interesting,” said Karan Kaul, who played the whistleblower in the play “Integrity,” which was the judges’ choice for the play that best deals with ethical issues. Kaul said that they wanted the audience to see that the current state of society is one in which a whistleblower can end up in poverty and the white collar criminals – in this case two employees guilty of a major accounting scandal and one of them also of insider trading – can end up with a mere slap on the wrist and millions of dollars in off-shore accounts.

“I was in a very international team,” Kelly Liu, who played the CEO in “Rice Follies,” the judges’ choice for the play that reflects the best overall performance by the team of MBA students. “My teammates came from U.S., South Korea, Taiwan, and China, which is one of the reasons that we choose outsourcing as our play’s theme. We reversed the current outsourcing direction to make the play more interesting and to think what if this happens in the emerging markets after a few years later? Will they just copy the current outsourcing model or will they think of other factors to make their decisions?”

“Rice Follies” takes place in the year 2080 in a world where China has become the premier economic and political superpower. “However, there has been a great deal of change in the demographics and the climate of the world,” explains Liu. “Due to family-planning policies, China now has an extreme shortage of labor. The USA (whose economy had previously been stifled by a central planning regime) with the combination of its extremely large labor pool (nearly half of the world’s population) and lack of government regulation (no child labor laws, minimum wage, or other similar worker’s rights) has been targeted by Chinese firms who have capitalized on the cheap labor and lack of government regulations to reduce the cost of their operations. The company, one of the world’s largest agricultural companies in China, is now contemplating whether to participate in the increasingly prevalent choice to move some of its rice-farming operations to America,” says Liu of the play, which was done almost entirely in Chinese with English subtitles projected on a screen.

“I agreed with the judges that the 'Rice Follies' was brilliant. It was funny and sad and made its point in a most entertaining way,” said Krapfel. “The Ethics Variety Show far exceeded my expectations. The pool of talent in our student body is wonderful, and their willingness to take a chance and display that talent in a public performance of this type makes me proud to work with them.”

“I was happy to be able to discuss and present material in class outside of the realm of cases, PowerPoint presentations, and classroom discussions,” said Donna Lin who wrote the play “Recruiting at Trrifff University” with Noam Levin, which dealt with questionable recruiting practices in sports programs in higher education and subsequent practices for treating student athletes. “It was a creative venture that allowed groups to express a little of their own perspectives on ethical behavior.”

The 10 plays included:

• Medicinal Mayhem
• Corporate Espionage in Three Acts
• Retirement Ethics
• Rice Follies
• Romeo and Juling
• My Dad’s Heart
• Humanity: The Other Benefit of Globalization
• Generally Rejected Accounting Principles
• Integrity
• Recruiting at Trrifff University

Congratulations to all first-year Smith School students: the actors, designers, directors, dramaturges, playwrights, stage managers, team chairs, and team vice chairs on a job well done!

Alissa Arford-Leyl, Office of Marketing Communications