The scandalous misdeeds found in such corporations as Enron, WorldCom, Tyco and HealthSouth now are raising questions about the schools of business administration where many executives got their training.

		Clarke Thomas is a Post-Gazette senior editor (clt34@pitt.edu).

In a new book William C. Frederick points out, "After all, Enron's Jeff Skilling and Andrew Fastow, two major figures at the center of that company's troubles, held MBA degrees from well-known business schools," Harvard and Northwestern, respectively. Mr. Frederick, professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh's Katz Graduate School of Business, discusses the matter in his newly published "Corporation, Be Good! The Story of Corporate Social Responsibility."

Mr. Frederick writes from the perspective of someone involved for half a century in the study of corporate social responsibility, outlining changes in thinking across the years. "Back in the 1950s and '60s, executives used their own consciences, based on religious and family beliefs. But that proved inadequate in the big blowups of the 1960s and '70s. Individual conscience was not enough in dealing with protest groups looking for changes in status and income and respect -- Martin Luther King Jr., Betty Friedan, Ralph Nader and environmentalists -- and now those addressing world poverty."

That meant moving to what is called "stakeholder management," requiring a different set of skills. "Even if you have a good conscience, it isn't easy to resolve the different problems that land on your desk. It's a different ball game, an enormous jigsaw puzzle to satisfy a range of stakeholders with conflicting interests and demands," Mr. Frederick asserts.

As questions of corporate responsibility and ethics come to the fore in new ways, Mr. Frederick thinks many business schools do not properly prepare their graduates. Moreover, the continuing scandals demonstrate that it isn't just a case of a few "rotten apples" but a systemic problem that the business schools should be addressing. His book lists 35 major companies which in recent years have been touched by executive scandal. Yet, he said, only about one-third of the nation's business schools require an ethics course.

What's the story in Pittsburgh? Clearly, Duquesne University's two business schools are in the lead with the Beard Center for Leadership in Ethics, headed by James Weber. Graduate students take a required applied ethics course. Duquesne has a Saturday and online master's program with a variety of ethics courses, with seeking a master's degree in leadership and business ethics as one option. On the undergraduate level, the Beard Center assists in placing students as volunteers in various social agencies serving the elderly, the homeless and the mentally challenged, with one goal: finding ways a collaborating business can achieve economic as well as charitable goals.

Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business is currently ramping up a much more modest program from its present status of having only one required "business, society and ethics" course at the undergraduate level and two non-required courses in the MBA program. John Hooker, a professor whose work focuses on business ethics and social responsibility, explains that next year ethics is to be integrated into courses across the curriculum, with two or three times as much instruction as at present. The ethics scandals really "got things rolling three or four years ago," he said.

The story at Pitt's Katz School has been an up/down/up affair. Under the leadership of William Frederick, at one time it was pre-eminent in the ethics field, with a five-member MBA ethics faculty at one point. But at the very peak of the corporate scandals four years ago, faculty attitudes changed and the school abolished its required MBA course in corporate social responsibility.

However, for undergraduates the Katz School retained a three-hour required course and launched a 16-hour certificate program in ethics and leadership, the only one of its kind in the country. Furthermore, under the leadership of Brad Agle, an associate professor and director of the David Berg Center for Ethics and Leadership, the school reorganized a 1.5-credit required course in its part-time and executive MBA programs, now rated No. 2 in the world by Business Week.

At the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, the Center for Business, Religion and Public Life has a renewed impetus under its new director, Deirdre King Hainsworth, starting with a lecture last fall by Sherron Watkins, the famed Enron whistleblower. Ms. Hainsworth teaches a required ethics course for second-year students.

In an approach to providing support for people in making good ethical decisions, the center is reaching out to local churches to establish a mentoring network, where professionals at different career stages can meet together and talk about the ethical challenges they face. Ms. Hainsworth also has launched programs addressing the ethical challenges posed by technology and globalization and, for medical and church communities, those raised by the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Finally, there are good examples of corporate responsibility among Pittsburgh firms. Knowledgeable people in the field have listed some of them for me -- PPG Industries, Alcoa, Bayer, Highmark, Medrad Inc. and Industrial Scientific Corp.

Given the importance of ethical trust in the capitalist system, may these academic and corporate efforts continue to multiply.