Since Mike’s Management Studies Program is on the beautiful South Campus it would be neat to have an episode where Lenny goes to meet Mike at school but Lenny goes to the City Centre Campus by mistake.  The two of them can be talking over their cell phones trying to meet up.  At the end of the episode they could realize that they are on two different campus.

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Yes.  Unequivocally, without a doubt, yes.

Tasers are considered a non-lethal option for police officers but in reality they are lethal.  They are killing people who, might be posing a threat, but rarely is it a threat that deserves a death sentence.  I know…I know… not every who is tasered dies.  In fact, the majority of people who are tasered survive with no lasting impression.  However, sometimes people do die.  I guess I’m not comfortable playing Russian Roulette with people’s lives.

I would rather the police officers discharge their gun.  Everyone knows that a gunshot wound can be lethal.  When an officer fires his gun, he does so knowing that it can lead to death.  This, hopefully, means that the officer only uses his gun when the situation is dire enough to warrant the possibility of death.

With a taser, the officer deploys the taser in situation that do not call for lethal force but where death is still a real possibility.  I have difficultly with that logic.  

In one of the most publicized Canadian cases of taser use leading to death, Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski was tasered in the Vancouver airport when he picked up a stapler and took a combative stance.  A few days into the inquiry, one of the officers said that he feared for his life when Dziekanski picked up the stapler.  The next day in the Edmonton Journal, a letter to the editor, pointed out that if staplers are so threatening then perhaps we should take away the tasers and hand out staplers instead. 

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Tough question.  The link below highlights some huge business scandals over the past 100 years.  Flipping through the site made me think that maybe business ethics is an oxymoron. 

http://www.boston.com/business/gallery/Businessscandals?pg=5

BUT… I have the pleasure of working with MacEwan business students and I know that they passionate, committed global citizens.  This year one of our students is the lead on Project Hope (Project Hope).  Our Commerce Club worked all year to make sure that their fellow students had a great experience in Business.  Other students have worked to promote Alberta Police Services (see www.joinalbertacops.ca/macewan).  Their actions demonstrate that ethics exist in business or, perhaps, more accurately ethical people exist in business.

This leads me to the uncomfortable realization that while there are ethical people in business; the actual structure of business in many cases does not support ethics in business.  Is business to blame?  In part they are, which is why business schools are responding by introducing ethics back into the classroom.  Although at MacEwan, we’ve been doing that for years.  

Government has to shoulder their share of the blame too.  They bought into the belief that a hands-off approach is the best approach.  Laissez-faire.  Let the free market rule.  But not even Adam Smith thought the free market should be allowed to operate unaided.  Ethics are hard to maintain with no oversight and no accountability except the accountability to shareholders (which is measured in dollars and not ethics).  

And it’s hard to point at government without having four fingers pointing back to us the voters.  We were happy to let companies run free when our stocks were soaring and jobs were plentiful.  

Can business ethics exist?  Yes.  Do they exist?  Yes.  Are they automatic?  No.

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Picture it.  The year is 2000.  The world didn’t end.  Computers didn’t rise up and take over humans.  Both of those possibilities would have saved me from making a decision about what to do after high school graduation.  Since that didn’t happen, I did the next best thing (in my mind) I just didn’t decide.  I took the year off.  I hoped on a Greyhound bus with my best friend and 6 days later found myself in Halifax, Nova Scotia.  Spent sometime there.  Came home.  Made money.  Partied with friends.  

Then it was that time again.  Time to decide.  This time my parents dropped the hammer.   Go to school or else (the ‘or else’ was never discussed but it scared me nonetheless).   How did I decide?  I surfed the net.  I talked to friends.  I think I might have went to an open house or two (I can’t remember).  Then I found it.  Bachelor of Arts.  Here was a program that didn’t require me to know what I wanted to do.  I could just study what I liked and decide later.  My procrastination skills have served me well my entire life.  I became an ARTIE.  Two years later, I moved across the country and finished my Arts degree at Mount Allison Universities (any Mounties out there??).  

Regrets.  No really.  Although I wish that I would have looked at Business or Education more seriously.  I was terrified of Math and thought that Business was all about numbers (I was wrong, wrong, wrong) and thought Education would bore me within a year or two.

Where am I now?  Well, graduation rolled around again and unable to make a career choice, I decided that Graduate studies was for me.  A MA in Social Justice and Equity Studies (Go Brock G0) offered me the perfect place to explore more ideas, develop more skills and develop excellent management skills.  Then it was back to Edmonton.  Home sweet home.  4 months later, I got a job with MacEwan School of Business and realized that Business was a option for everyone.  Even liberal arts freaks like me.  

Anyway.  That’s how I picked a post-secondary program.  I kept it general and studied what I love.  Fours years after graduating with my BA, I am Managing the Student Services Centre for MacEwan’s BCOM program and loving every minute of it.

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I am ready. Login (check), coca-cola (check), chips (check), awesome Blog Camp shirt (check), goody bag (check). Ideas…. That could be a problem. I can’t wait for the first question to be asked. That will get me thinking and typing.

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