Values-Driven Leadership Development: Where We Have Been and Where We Could Go

Abstract

This essay revisits the premises upon which business ethics education has been based and then “flips” them, in an effort to help transform management education's approach to values-driven leadership development. Previous assumptions about what we teach, who we teach, and how we teach ethics are described, and a summary of how the Giving Voice to Values (GVV) pedagogy/curriculum flips these assumptions is provided. A brief review of the impact to date of this experiment is included, along with reflection on some of the new opportunities and challenges GVV has begun to face as a result of the rapid take-up of this approach around the globe.

Keywords:

• business ethics
• values
• leadership development
• curriculum
• pedagogy

Notes

¹The Aspen Institute was incubator and, along with Yale School of Management, founding partner for Giving Voice to Values, which is now housed and supported at Babson College. See www.GivingVoiceToValues.org and www.MaryGentile.com.

²This conception and the terms are borrowed and adapted, although applied for a different context and purpose, from Dees and Crampton (1991).

³Just as we name GVV explicitly as a “thought experiment” and as we make our “starting assumptions” explicit, so too we name our conscious use of decision-making biases and heuristics. GVV is a pedagogy that is based on a sort of “informed consent,” if you will.

⁴For more information about how to participate in the GVV Faculty Networks or to discuss the launch of a new network, [email protected]. In addition to the discipline networks, there is a GVV/India Faculty Network that is promoting the development of GVV cases set in Indian businesses and context, and new launches include a GVV/Sustainability Network, a GVV/Social Entrepreneurship Network, a GVV/HRM Network, a GVV/Public Sector Network, and so on.