Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/54913
farms that have benefited from an irrigation system installed by Catholic Relief Services. A farm- er can now get more revenue from one-eighth hectare of land than he used to get from two and a quarter hectares. The technol- ogy is primitive by the standards of developed countries, but it required significant government, social, and market interven- workers and the responsible use of resources. At the other, profit comes because of attention to the farmers' welfare. We must show this contrast to our students, so they can see that profits do not have to come at the expense of ethics. On a brief trip to Shanghai last summer, I was heartened when I spent half a day with deans from Chinese business schools to discuss An Afghan woman works in a local bakery. which aims to bring universal val- ues into business school curricula. The initiative was launched about 18 months ago through a part- nership of AACSB International, EFMD, and the Aspen Institute, in association with the U.N. Global Compact. Already, more than 300 business schools in 63 countries have signed on to the initiative. At the U.N. Global Summit, PRME articulated its goal to achieve 1,000 signatories by 2015. PRME provides an important counterpoint to the direction that business education has taken over the last 60 years. The prevailing approach has developed a lexicon that not only has provided terms, but also has shaped the basic atti- tudes and entrenched values of our students. That lexicon is highly mechanistic, employing terms such as efficiency, utility, maximization, and optimization as the basis for decision making. The U.N. Global Compact and PRME call us back to the fundamental canons of human communities: • In human communities, human rights take precedence over all other interests. Therefore, eco- nomic enterprises must serve people, not the other way around. tions. Now, the 40 farm families in the area can earn a premium for growing produce out of sea- son. They can also afford cell phones so that they can check prices and sell their produce to the highest bidders. In these two experiences, I saw business at its two extremes. At one end of the spectrum, profit comes before the ethical treatment of 44 May/June 2011 BizEd curriculum innovations and sig- nificant trends. These deans gave me renewed hope when they told me that they intend to join forces on a voluntary basis to establish a requirement in business ethics for MBA programs in China. Business schools are beginning to step up to the challenge of a broader mission through the Prin- ciples for Responsible Manage- ment Education (PRME) initiative, • As a community, by definition, we flourish and advance collec- tively, not individually. A community calls for mutual- ity, a right proportion between what we take and what we give back, between what we use and how we replenish. Frameworks for law and business create the con- cept of "externalities," but in the life of a community, there are no