MBA Oath Now Has More Than 1700 Signatories

Back in May, I commented on the new MBA Oath, started by some second-year Harvard Business School students, in which they promised to "create value responsibly and ethically." I hoped it would take effect, but was a little skeptical -- after all, 50% of marriages end up in divorce despite that "'til death do us part" line.

Now, reports Business Week, more than 1700 students and recent graduates have signed, not just from Harvard, but also from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, Yale School of Management, Foster School of Business (at U. of Washington), Fuqua School of Business at Duke, and many others.

The oath begins, "As a manager, my purpose is to serve the greater good by bringing people and resources together to create value that no single individual can create alone." (click here for the oath's website)

The Harvard ethics oath is not the first (both INSEAD and Thunderbird claim that honor), but it appears to be the first to have gone viral in a fairly impressive way.

While the oath is "just words", its intent is greater than that. As an earlier Business Week article pointed out, "the oath's creators have big plans for the future of the project. In addition to eventually having hundreds of thousands of MBAs sign the pledge, they want it to be part of a much more ambitious agenda to professionalize the occupation of management, transforming it into a vocation much like medicine or law."

Both medicine and law require more than oaths; they require licensure, and that license carries teeth. A doctor can lose her license to practice, and a lawyer can be disbarred. Will managers willingly put themselves under such rigorous oversight?