Improving Business Ethics: The President's Lonely Task
John I. Reynolds is a Professor of Management and Business Analysis and Research at Texas A&M University. He holds a B.A. in Economics from Princeton, an M.B.A. from Harvard and a D.B.A. from Harvard. His work has been published in the Academy of Management Review, Business Horizons, Logistics Spectrum and Business Logistics. There has never been a shortage of calls for the ethical improvement of business decisions. Few couch the issue, in the apocalyptic terms of Robert L. Heilbroner, as a &dquo;long-run challenge to a business civilization,&dquo;’ but no one who has thought deeply about the problem treats it lightly. Some think of it as a need for &dquo;social responsibility&dquo; in business; others are more concerned with &dquo;morality&dquo; or &dquo;justice&dquo; in an absolute sense. Few people, in or out of the ranks of management, are completely satisfied with the status quo. But there is a great deal of controversy over how to effect the needed changes. .
The Social Responsibility of Business: A Dissent
BUTLER D. SHAFFER is Associate Professor in the Law and Society program of the College of Business Administration at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He holds the J.D. degree from the University of Chicago Law School. His articles have appeared in Labor Law Journal, University of Miami Law Review, and Creighton Law Review. One of the more widely-touted concepts of recent years, enjoying support both from within and without the busi-
Application of the Kano Model for a Better Understanding of Customer Requirements in Higher Education—A Pilot Study
Various pieces of information and knowledge turn into “know-how” simply by their application in the market. This applies to all spheres of activities. It is therefore important to know and understand the requirements of customers already in the stage of making a product, and to confront these with the possibilities of a producer. In this article we are exploring the possibilities of a better understanding of the requirements of customers and stakeholders in the process of the creation of products in educational services. In particular, we examined seven general requirements: practice orientation, ethical orientation, research orientation, quality resources, innovation orientation, skills orientation, and quality staff. We use the Kano model on a pilot sample of respondents at an institution of higher education. Our results showed that “practice orientation” and “quality resources” are the most stable requirements, while “quality staff” is the least stable. The most linear requirement (the same effect on satisfaction and dissatisfaction) is “innovation orientation”. “Research orientation” belongs to attractive requirements and we also found that in the case of “ethical orientation” there are weak relations between positive and negative responses in our survey. The “skills orientation” proved to be too general, and our research shows that it could be indifferent. It is therefore advisable to specify the investigated skills when investigating requirements on educational services. The main contribution based on the proposed research procedures is an effective linking of customers and producers already from the beginning of constructing a value chain. Investing in sophisticated management approaches when modelling products and processes can thus become a significant source of the competitive advantage of an educational institution. At the same time, it is a contribution to better placing of its graduates in the labor market.