Where should we place blame for the current failures in our global economy? There are many responsible parties—CEOs, lenders, borrowers, regulatory agents, congressional members. Some have been trained by b-schools, so we do share in the criticism.

Many business schools have been grappling recently with this question and their role in the answer. Amidst the business wreckage, it is right to look foundationally at how we, as business educators, teach our students and what we teach them to value.

"This is an opportunity for business schools to make ethical thinking a part of the fabric of their curriculum," says Carolyn Woo, Dean of the Mendoza College of Business. "Without dictating what is ethical and what is not, educators must help students see the importance of developing an ethical philosophy as a fundamental part of one's identity. This development of an ethical leader has been in our DNA as a University since our founding."

Ethical leadership, however, is not the full answer. "When we make tough business decisions, we also have a tendency to oversimplify the analysis," says Ed Conlon, Associate Dean of the Mendoza College. "We must teach our students to evaluate risk—to ask the question, 'How wrong can I be, and how much does that change my answer?' We must be dogged in teaching our students to fully vet solutions and to avoid oversimplification of answers."

Finally, we must return more to the heart of economic enterprise: to serve people. "If success in business equates exclusively to wealth creation for the individual, we will never find our way out of this economic turmoil," says Dean Woo.

"It is wrong for leaders to take risks, gain short-term benefits and to pass the outcome of those risks to future leaders and other stakeholders," she continues. "We need leaders to act as entrepreneurs who have a direct relationship between their risk and their long-term return. Corporate leaders need more 'skin in the game.'"

The Mendoza College of Business continues to be active in seeking ways educators can address the economic crisis—including adoption and promotion of the United Nation's Principles for Responsible Management Education; advocating for ethics integration into curricula; teaching our MBA students methods to fairly and thoroughly address business problems and their risks; and granting interviews to business publications to share our perspective.