Business students win ethics case competition
Concordia University’s John Molson School of Business (JMSB) won the Dalhousie Business Ethics Case Competition, held between November 8 and 10 in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
“We’ve had a great start to the competition season, having reached the podium a number of times” says Head Coach and Advisor to the Competition Program, Mark Haber, “but this is our first gold of the year.”
The team of undergraduates from JMSB was led by Coach, Peter Vogopoulos and included students Jessica Daigneault, William Hall, Alexander Harris and Rose-Lyne Youssef Boghos. According to Haber, the team worked hard to develop the competencies needed to be successful in a competition focused entirely on business ethics.
“There is not wealth of ethics courses taught at the undergraduate level,” he says. “Peter did an incredible job of preparing this group. We were fortunate to also have the help of Tim Field (the MBA case competition advisor) and Marc LeGuen (MBA 11), who shared their insights into the field of business ethics with the students.”
The preparation began ten days prior to start of the competition, when the team was sent the first of three cases that they would have to analyse. They were asked to prepare a 20-minute presentation, to be delivered on the first day of the competition.
Having been successful in the first two round of the competition, the team moved on to the third and final round, where they were given four hours to prepare a presentation that involved a firm’s reconciling the desire to be eco-friendly with the lure of making the potentially lucrative decision to invest in the oil sands.
“These are the sorts of ethical dilemmas faced by executives in the real world all the time,” says Haber. “Our students impressed the judges with how well prepared they were, how thoughtfully they presented their recommendations and well they answered difficult questions on the fly.”
“This was a very talented team,” says Vogopoulos. “During their preparation cases they picked up on (some) nuances (in the case) that surprised a lot of people and tackled some MBA-level sustainability issues with aplomb. I am tremendously proud of them.”
The final results of the competition were:
- John Molson School of Business, Concordia University
- School of Business and Economics, Wilfred Laurier University
- Alberta School of Business, University of Alberta
Related links:
• Dalhousie Business Ethics Case Competition
• John Molson Competition Committee
• John Molson School of Business