This book is aimed at teaching business students the near term skill set required around what to say, to whom and how to say it when the manager knows what he or she thinks is right when an ethical breech occurs but doesn't feel confident about how to act on his or her convictions. This overlooked but consequential skill set is the first step in building the ethical muscle. This is the purpose of the Giving Voice to Values program. Faculty at business schools from MIT to INSEAD to Notre Dame to Harvard Business School to the University of Queensland to the Indian School of Business, among many others, have used and/or developed elements of the pilot curriculum.
Our goal is to both build a conversation across the core curriculum (not only in ethics courses) and provide the teaching aids and curriculum for a new way of thinking about ethics education. Rather than a focus on ethical analysis, the Giving Voice to Values (GVV) curriculum focuses on ethical implementation and asks the question: What if I were going to act on my values? What would I say and do? How could I be most effective? Educating for Values-Driven Leadership: An Action Approach will be an edited volume that provides faculty across the business curriculum with examples, strategies and assistance in applying the GVV approach in their required and elective courses. In addition to an introductory chapter which will explain the rationale and strategy behind GVV, there will be individual chapters by faculty from the major business functional areas and from faculty representing different geographic regions.
The book will be a useful guide for faculty from any business discipline on HOW to use the GVV approach in his/her teaching, and it can also serve as a brief background reading for students who are embarking upon their business studies, encouraging them to take the GVV approach to their studies, whether or not it is explicitly introduced in every course.