EMBA Intercollegiate Business Ethics Case Competition

The Center for Ethics and Business and the Executive MBA Program at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, CA is pleased to announce its inaugural intercollegiate business ethics case competition for Executive MBA students to be held on Saturday, April 21, 2012 on the LMU campus.

This competition will use a variation on the model used by the highly successful Intercollegiate Business Ethics Case Competition (IBECC). Begun as a campus event at LMU in 1996, IBECC is now jointly sponsored by the Ethics & Compliance Officer Association, LMU and the University of St. Thomas (MN), it has grown to be an international competition and is widely recognized as the most important undergraduate and graduate intercollegiate business ethics competition of its kind. Recent competitions have included teams from Turkey (Middle East Technical University), Hungary (Central European University), France (INSEAD), England (Oxford) and Canada (Simon Fraser and McGill), as well as teams from every part of the United States. Major corporate partners have included: Northrop Grumman, Ernst & Young, Meggitt, Airbus, Wells Fargo and Raytheon. (The next IBECC will be held May 8-10, 2013 in conjunction with the 2013 ECOA Sponsoring Partner Forum in San Diego, CA. Details will be forthcoming.)

In the EMBA competition, teams of 3-4 students will be asked to choose a contemporary case in business that has a central ethical issue. Approximately one month before the competition, teams will be asked to submit a short (c. 3-4 page) written analysis of the case in which cover primarily the ethical aspects of the case, supported with the financial and legal implications of the problem and of their proposed solution. It is expected that the problem identification, analysis and solutions be presented to senior management or the board of directors of the company being addressed. Solutions should also contain overall implication to the company.

The competition itself will consist of at least three members of the team giving a presentation of approximately 15 minutes primarily about the ethical issues. This will be followed by 10-15 minutes of Q&A and, then, feedback about the team's performance. Teams will be evaluated mainly by executive judges, many of whom will be members of the Southern California Business Ethics Roundtable. (The SCBER is a regional association of corporate ethics and compliance officers.)

Depending on the number of teams involved, we might also conduct a version of IBECC's 90-second competition. (A representative of the team is asked to assume that he or she is at a meeting at their company in which people are discussing their team's topic, but no one has raised the ethical issues. There's a pause in the conversation. He or she has 90 seconds in which to make a case that there are significant ethical issues that deserve the group's attention.)

The top team will receive $1,000; runners-up, $500.

More details about the competition will be forthcoming.

Because this is the first year of the event, we are open to a variety of possibilities regarding team composition: current EMBA students, EMBA alumni, teams comprised of both.

The inaugural event will be evaluated after completion, and plans for a 2013 competition will be developed and refined. If interested, please contact Kirsten Nordblom at knordblom@lmu.edu or 310.338.2321.