The MBA Oath: Setting a Higher Standard for Business Leaders

"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..."

So begins the MBA Oath, conceived in early 2009 by Max Anderson, Peter Escher, and a team of Harvard Business School students. They saw that in the wake of the financial crisis, the Madoff scandal, and other headlines, MBAs were being vilified. People were angry because business leaders, many of whom were MBAs, seemed not to care about anything beyond their own private interests. Many began to question the worth of business schools and the MBA degree.

The oath quickly spread beyond Harvard, becoming a worldwide movement for a new generation of leaders who care about society as well as the bottom line. Thousands of graduating MBAs have now pledged to conduct themselves with honesty and integrity, just as medical students swear by the Hippocratic oath before they can practice.

This book is the manifesto for the movement. It provides not only a strong case for why the MBA Oath is necessary but also examples of how it can be applied in the real world. It will help guide businesspeople through some of the toughest decisions they'll make in their careers.

Max Anderson and Peter Escher, two recent graduates of Harvard Business School, worked with a team of MBA students to found the MBA Oath in May 2009 and garnered worldwide attention for their mission to establish an official code of business ethics. Anderson currently serves as chairman of the MBA Oath organization and lives in New York City with his wife and daughter. Escher is a board member and serves as its founding executive director.