Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/59979
Letters Sorting Through SOX I found the article "The Sarbanes- Oxley Effect" in the July/August issue of BizEd very interesting. In fact, I had listened to the SEC's Business Roundtable on SARBOX in mid-April. I was impressed with the few who noted that possibly better internal control would not have pre- vented the problems that have led to so many accounting scandals, espe- cially those of the last five years. I've been disappointed to see vir- tually no in-depth, serious diagnosis of the weaknesses of the contempo- rary situation and the contributing sources. Imagine where the field of medicine would be if judgments of treatment were as unstudied as those made by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. The PCAOB immediately, or so it seemed, determined that an audit of for answers might provide amazing data! Possibly there are some thoughtful practitioners, as well as professors, who might provide some of the study and analysis required at this point. Mary Ellen Oliverio Formerly of the Lubin School of Business Pace University New York, New York A Different Kind of Ranking Andy Policano makes important points and valu- able suggestions in "What Price Rankings?" from the September/October issue. Yet his analysis of ranking programs was incomplete. As Andrew Horning noted in the Letters section of the same issue, there are alter- native efforts to look atMBA programs. Research here at the Aspen Institute tells us that stu- dents want to attend, and com- panies want to hire from,MBA programs that prepare graduates for the complex ethical, social, and environmental issues that face business today. Since 1998, the Beyond Grey Pinstripes pro- gram, which is conducted in partnership with the World internal control was a key to the solution of perceived problems! I have one overall question for the SEC. When the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 was passed as a statutory amendment to the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, it established a requirement for internal control. Why was there no good-faith implementation dur- ing the following decades? Probing 8 BizEd NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2005 Resources Institute, has highlighted schools that do just that. Our goal has been to provide positive rein- forcement to schools that get it right, while providing the field with detailed information on innovation and best practices. This year, for the first time, we decided to publish our findings as an ordinal ranking. Many schools requested this change, particularly Unlike other rankings providers, we make public the full data set upon which we make our decisions. Any student, administrator, or corporate recruiter can visit our Web site, www.beyondgreypinstripes.org, and review relevant research and course- work at more than 130 schools around the world. We hope that this makes our tool more useful. We put effort into continuously improving our survey, precisely because we are aware that there are always unintended consequences. We look forward to engaging with Dean Policano and others as we consider how to highlight exemplary work in a way that is accurate, fair, and useful—and brings the front-runners the attention they deserve. Judith Samuelson Executive Director Business and Society Program The Aspen Institute s z because they are proud of their achievements and know that the media often pay no attention to "surveys." Rather than creating a tiered system where lower tiers invariably look second best, we wanted to send the message that all of our Top 30 schools have achieve- ments of which they can be proud, although everyone has room for improvement.