Reimagining the Workplace

Alison Taylor is a clinical professor at NYU Stern School of Business and the Executive Director at Ethical Systems. She also wrote Higher Ground -  How Business Can Do the Right Thing in a Turbulent World. Here she discusses what she has learned from the workplace needs of her MBA students.

I teach ethics and sustainability classes at the NYU Stern School of Business, a university with strong connections to Wall Street. Repeatedly, I see that today’s MBA students press for rethinking the role of Human Resources inside corporations, and for a new approach to leadership and culture more broadly. Our future business leaders are more in favor of worker rights and voice than I would have assumed, and these trends are accelerating.

Soaring interest in more diverse, equitable, and inclusive organisations best illustrates how emerging ethics challenges are no longer restricted to narrow, legalistic concerns but multidimensional issues that are fast transforming organizational culture.