Rich is a student in Pepperdine’s three-year Master of Business Administration/Master of Public Policy program, graduating in April. His aim is to work in finance or economics.

Over and over again at the Graziadio School of Business and Management I hear the refrain from students that they are interested in sustainability or corporate social responsibility as a career. These phrases have left many MBA candidates captivated, here and on other campuses across the country. Indeed, it seems to be the hot topic in business for this era; much like strategic management was for the 1990s. The fact that so many students are aiming to work in a field that sounds well, dubious, is a cause for concern. How did we get here?

Corporate social responsibility – or CSR, as they call it – is supposed to be a way for companies to measure and monitor their impact on the wider world. Every layer of society – the ethical, legal, environmental, and political realms – is relevant in assessing how a firm operates. The ultimate goal is to create a certification system that quantifies performance in these areas. Hand-in-hand with this is the stakeholder theory, a concept which proposes that the purpose of a business is to serve the variety of interests which have stakes in the company: shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers, as well as communities and governments. The stakeholder model upends the two established notions of business purpose – creating profit for the owners and, as Peter Drucker formulated, creating and keeping a customer.

Corporate social responsibility and the stakeholder theory are radical departures from the traditional ways of understanding business. These ideas don’t go so far as to venture to replace them, but in some cases they can be weighted equally. Indeed, Triple Bottom Line analysis claims to account for the firm’s contribution toward people, planet, and profits. Students frequently list it is a qualification on their resumes.

Have these business students suddenly gotten altruistic or uninterested in creating wealth? Has an army of do-gooders swarmed our schools? Maybe. But more than anything else, the whole thing appears to be a product of our times. The current crop of degree-takers came of age during the Enron scandal, a cauldron of fraud, deception, and expertise that confirmed the worst impressions about American big business. The other crackups following it – including a chief executive’s $6,000 shower curtain and Martha Stewart’s lying to the feds – brought to the forefront a layer of seaminess and self-regard. It prompted business schools to roll out courses in ethics with these case studies in mind. Corporate social responsibility expanded upon this by looking beyond the individual to the company, and asking us to consider its behavior.

There are several things wrong with this. By switching the focus from the person to the firm, the CSR movement confuses things. Companies aren’t living, breathing things; the people inside them are. Borrowing on another field in business academia, organization behavior, CSR chalks up such wrongs of pollution, mass layoffs, and price gouging to the firms per se rather than their leaders. In essence, they argue that the purpose and perspective of the firm is out of whack, a far wider claim than blaming the people in charge. It’s the corporate social responsibility experts’ role, then, to come in and adjust that.

Sustainability also ignores the old truth that what goes around comes around. As a finance professor recently told my class, “What happens when a company starts to mistreat its customers, treat its employees like dirt, abuse its suppliers, and make the world a worse off place? That usually gets out to the public, and it has an effect on sales.” People, planet, and profit are ultimately aligned. As the standard of living rises, consumers have higher expectations for how their purchases affect the world around them. Companies that have faltered in this regard, such as Nike, have paid the price on the real bottom line.

As much as some firms like Nike and Wal-Mart have found themselves in the crosshairs of the CSR movement, big businesses do have an inherent advantage: their size allows them to co-opt it. They have the resources to open sustainability shops, mint public relations campaigns, and cut deals with government over how they will confirm to new regulation. This faux kind of good behavior takes the pressure off the true operation of the business to be up to par.

More than the swirl of corporate scandals, I think the financial boom and bust have encouraged schools and students to carve out the sustainability niche. Because of the availability of cheap debt, leverage played a vital role in the two cycles. This put the financial sector squarely in the center of the rise and collapse of the U.S. economy. The way so many financiers, most of them MBA-holders, played this game – with a single-minded focus on winning and lack of concern for the big picture – pushed some of the socially-minded to draw up a new playbook with different rules and results.

As the economy deleverages and finance plays more of a supporting role in the next growth cycle, the traditional components of American business will return to center stage. The ones who have the most stakeholders will be best positioned to work through the challenges of meeting their expectations, i.e. of being socially responsible. Isn’t that what the best businesses have always done anyway? They don’t need a special field of study to tell them how. As it turns out, corporate social responsibility isn’t anything new under the sun.

By Siawn Ou, MBA 2010

“Oh, I thought you were Chinese…”

That’s weird, I thought I was too.

It must be an odd phenomenon in China for a person of native blood to have any sort of deficiency in the Chinese language. Whenever someone breaks through the layers of my fluency in conversational Chinese, my cover of passing for a native gets blown. What ensues is a sequence of puzzlement and denial on their behalf, until I put them at ease by reciting the abridged version of my life story that I have become so accustomed to doing… “Born in Beijing and grew up in the States. Where? Boston, but now I live in Los Angeles (they wouldn’t know where Malibu was anyway). Oh, I left China at age 6. Yes both my parents are Chinese. Yes we spoke Chinese at home.”

Afterwards I am accepted as one of them again. *Relief*

Today I got the timeless question but it was phrased slightly different. “If someone asked you what your nationality was, would you say Chinese or American?” That’s easy. Look at my passport and you have your answer. I offered to rephrase the question to her, “Do you mean to ask, ‘if someone asked you whether you considered yourself to be Chinese or American, which would you say?’” And of course, I’ve prepped an answer to this long ago, and my answer will always be the same. In the words of Bruce Lee when asked the exact same question: “You know how I want to think of myself? As a human being”.

I’m working on one of my last projects for the FEMBA program, a paper on central banks for my Global Capital Markets & Institutions class.

Now, unless you don’t live on this planet (or maybe in the right BRIC nation), it’s hard to not be constantly aware of the shifting paradigm regarding global economies and financial markets in lieu of the deep recession in the U.S. and its impact on the rest of the world.  Beginning with the collapse of Bear Sterns and the subsequent bail out of AIG, among others, back in the fall of 2008, there have been actions and interventions in global capital markets by central banks and governments unlike any the world has ever seen.  You hear talks of $80B in loans here, $500B in liquidity injections there, and while you grasp the size of these amounts its easy to lose perspective in the abstract terms these figures mean, in aggregate of whats happened the last two years, and what will happen in the future.

Going back to my paper for Global Cap…  in doing research on the Fed and the impact of their actions since the fall of 2007, I came across a great visual representation of what exactly the Fed has undertaken with the goal of attempting to stabilize the financial markets in the U.S. (and the world), preventing further declines in the GDP of the U.S., and stabilize prices stoked by fear of deflation (2007) and now inflation or maybe even hyper-inflation (today) in a book titled, The Road Ahead for the Fed, by John B. Taylor & John Ciorciari.

Now from my research I can tell you prior to the fall of 2007, the balance sheet of the Fed looked pretty much the same since 2002, with U.S. Treasury securities being the primary asset of the Fed and Fed notes (U.S. dollars) oustanding in the economy being the primary liability.  Now, without discussing all of the evident changes to the structure of the Fed’s balance sheet, what should hit you first is (1) the enourmous increase in the size of the Fed’s balance sheet – more than a 100% increase in less than 3 months (2) and what the underlying factors are supporting the increase.

Mortgage-Backed securities (which the the U.S. govt guarantees through Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and a host of other institutions) are currently the primary source of assets for the Fed – a scary proposition when you consider companies like Countrywide (at one time the nations largest morgtage lender) nearly collapsed (or did, it can be argued) under the weight of these obligations.

Looking at the liabilities of the Fed now, deposits (or the reserves of banks) are now the largest liability of the Fed.  You know all that money the U.S. government, the Treasury and the Fed injected into the financial system to keep it afloat and allow loans and liquidty to continue?  There it is, sitting stale like a desolate pool of water…  not moving, not being liquid, not helping credit and loans for the economy (if you’ve tried to buy a house lately you know what I’m talking about).  Basically, instead of being the “lender of last resort” the Fed became the ultimate purchaser in the world, and its actions have created a fundamentally different central bank for the U.S. for the foreseeable future.

What impact will this have going forward?  How will the Fed get back to that steady, boring, plateau of promoting price stability and full employment through traditional monetary policy actions?  However, what isn’t up for debate in my opinion, is the dramatically different picture the Fed is painting with the management of its balance sheet, and in this case a picture truly is worth a thousand words.

By Siawn Ou, MBA 2010

Facebook was banned in China as of June 2009. It appears the reason for this was that people were rallying online in protest of the recent conflict between the Uyghur and the Han Chinese. The Uyghur are a Muslim based minority group in China.

Uyghur in China are probably most commonly recognized for the eateries they run. Their most popular dish: grilled lamb skewers. This one simple food unbiasedly resonates with locals and expats alike in the same way that Fenway Franks resonates with Red Sox fans. I’ve seen ritzy women come out of high end clubs, stumble over in their heels to one of these food carts, and delightfully satisfy their drunchies on lamb. As my friend once said of the Uyghur, “they make delicious food for everyone”. And it’s quite true.

Last summer, my friend from Boston and I would frequent this one Uyghur joint in downtown Shanghai near his hotel. We’d order up 20 skewers of lamb, some Nan bread, and I’d pick up some frosty brews from 7 Eleven across the street. We’d sit by the curb on cheap wooden stools and eat on an uneven plastic table. The Uyghur would have one of their CDs playing and we’d all jam to some gnarly music. It was seriously some of the best times I’ve had.

I haven’t gone back to that same joint this year, but have been eating instead at a spot near where I live. One night I was grabbing a late dinner, and happened to stumble in upon a small community of Uyghur hanging out and having a meal. I sat at my usual spot and ordered my usual small mountain of lamb. For one reason or another, some of the folks took a slight fascination with me. They would ask me questions like: “Are you a fitness trainer?” and “Can you fight 10 guys at a time?” (The latter to which I answered, “No, probably just 1 person, and it would have to be a small child.”) Once I told them I was from the States one guy asked if my wife was American. Really? I was never aware of how mature and settled I looked.

In a country where most dialogue between strangers is exchanged either inside a cab or hassling over merchant goods, it was a relief to so casually chat with these easygoing folks. I have little to no understanding of the political conflict between the Chinese government and the Uyghur, but from my brief interactions with them I can say they are some of the friendliest and chill people in China.

By Siawn Ou, MBA 2010

It has only been a year since my last visit to China, yet I was not prepared for the initial culture shock this time around. Not that my home country is foreign territory to me, but perhaps I’ve grown so mentally detached from the norms and lifestyle here that I naturally feel like an outsider.

It’s quite weird, and eerily real that we are conditioned to look for something familiar to ground ourselves when we’re in a foreign environment. At home, I’d never venture into a Starbucks, but here I am, nursing my mocha and typing on my laptop… a classic portrait of a coffee shop junkie.

How to articulate this feeling? A good analogy can be found in this episode of LOST. During the episode, one of the characters Desmond becomes entangled in mental time jumps, sometimes appearing in the present and sometimes appearing in the past; yet all of this occurs inside his head. In order to save his brain from eventually short circuiting, he was instructed to find an entity that existed in both time periods, serving as a common reference point and a means of grounding himself mentally. I guess that reference point for me can be found in English speakers and a Starbucks with internet access.

As I sit here and stare at the masses of people outside going about their daily routine despite the perpetual rain and lack of sunshine, I struggle to grasp how they can be so nonchalant while I’m here on the verge of despair. Perhaps it’s a lack of relativity. This is the life they know, this is the city they grew up in. As for me, making the sudden transition from clear skies, 14 hour daylight, and surfing when I want, to consistent overcast skies and a 6pm dusk… it’s a bit overbearing.

But oh wait, this download is almost done. I’ll be distracted again soon enough.

By J.T. Stout, IMBA, MIB 2010

Nary is there a day, when I step from my doorway into the street, that I do not think about salmon. This is unusual for me, considering that I’ve spent most of my life avoiding fish, so read carefully. My student’s schedule operates on a rather different timeframe than the working world. When I go outside it seems like I’m always swimming upstream, like the salmon, of course. When I’m going to school in the evening the three million other people on this island are going home in the opposite direction. This contraflow creates a rigorous trek to the subway, which will take me on the last leg of my journey to spawn new thoughts about business for the next four hours. After class I’m ready to come home. At least I get to survive, unlike the salmon. Case in point, Hong Kong is crowded as ever. That’s the extent of my sympathizing with salmon. Don’t let them know I ate sushi last night.

Everything is still going rather well in Hong Kong. The weather, for one, is much better. For a whole three weeks now it has been possible to go outside and stay dry (from rain or sweat, you decide). Classes have begun their second session. This means three new classes for me, which are “Managing the Leadership Challenge”, “China’s External Relations and their Economic Impact”, and “Financial Modeling”. So far, so good.

Job searching is the other big project. I’m looking for positions in strategy consulting. My “Consulting Skills for Managers” course really piqued my interest and developed my analytical skills, as the course title might suggest (success!). I would like to get in contact with professionals in the field; it seems to me like a career in which I would be genuinely enthusiastic about making an impact. I like the logical challenges of problem solving and the opportunities to interact with people in a wide range of industries and even countries.

That sums it up for now. I’m halfway through my stay here, but somehow it feels like I’ve been here forever. I think this is a good thing; it means I’m enjoying my time thus far and still have an equal amount of time left. Zai jian, good-bye.

…but, not like I’m counting!

A welcome break from the madness that is the last trimester came in the form of a Graziadio Night Out event two weeks ago at the Sofitel Hotel in West Hollywood.  Now, I’ve only been to one other Night Out @ The Custom Hotel back in April, but it was a great opportunity to meet new people (which I did), network (which I did), and catch up with some of my fellow students whom I hadn’t seen since class.

For the event at the Sofitel, I took a friend of mine who owns an entertainment company, Sangin Entertainment, that imports, produces, and distributes movie & film productions from India into the United States.  He’s not affiliated with Pepperdine, but it was an opportunity for me to spend time with a friend while at the same time, allowing him to promote his business and network.  That being said, in the end the event really ended up being a chance to blow off some steam, relax, and have some fun…  and I think everyone else there was on the same mission too, if you know what I mean.

While at the last event I made a point to reach out to people I didn’t know and network, this night was all about hanging with friends by the fire pit, catching up on life and enjoying the “night out” which in the end, is just another reason why I think these events are great – they can be what you want them to be.  If you want to network and meet new people, you can.  If you want lounge in a corner with some friends you haven’t seen in months, you can do that too…  and the different agendas don’t clash, its just people out having a good time and taking advantage of the Pepperdine network & community.

On a side note, I was also recently notified of graduating with Honors, Beta Gamma Sigma, which I have to say was a complete surprise, but also gratifying at the same time, to be recognized for my efforts the last two years.  It’s kind of embarrasing but I’d never heard of the honor prior to being notified, so I studied the accompaning material and did some research online and found out it’s the international honor society for business schools accredited through the AACSB. Still skeptical, I emailed my friend and former business school advisor from my undergraduate at Puget Sound and inquired to her…  Was this really an honor, or was it like being ‘king of the village idiots’ so to speak?  “Hey, I’m Beta Gamma Sigma too! Congrats smart guy!”, she replied…  What can I say, I didn’t know! But like I said, a cool achievement for me and in a way some vindication for the long days & sleepless nights that I’ve put in during the program…

Six more weeks…

It’s nearing the end of my first year at Pepperdine, and I must say that one of the best decisions I made early on was finding a group of like-minded, hardworking individuals that I worked well with.  From our very first Organizational Behavior (OB) class till now, we’ve worked in the same 4-person team every chance we got.  At Pepperdine, not everyone is on the same track – they understand that “life happens” and people need to scale back or take a break every now and again – so not everyone is as fortunate to end up in the same classes with the same people every trimester.

But if you find yourself on a good team, I recommend that you try to stick with that same group as much as possible.  You’ll find out soon enough that nearly every class requires some sort of teamwork, and there is usually at least one presentation involved (fun stuff huh?).    Even though we’re not all on exactly the same track, we try to take at least one of the two classes per trimester together.  Over the course of the year, I’ve found that we’re starting to have an innate understanding of each others strengths and weaknesses.  We’re no longer afraid to speak up and offer constructive criticism to one another… and best of all, my classmates have now become my dear friends.

Some may disagree with me.  Some might prefer to branch out and explore various working styles, and that’s okay too.  I’m just sharing my personal experiences since this is my post and all.  :p  But whatever you do, one collaboration tool I highly recommend that my team has been using is DropBox.  It is an easy way to quickly upload any file from your computer and share it with whoever you give permissions to.  For example, my team will share a Powerpoint presentation, and any team member can access that file, make changes, and save – the saved changes will then translate on every single computer with that same synced, shared folder.  Has anyone else tried DropBox?

Other Collaboration Tools of Interest:

• Google Docs – you’ll need a gmail account to really take advantage of these features, but they’re great.
• Elluminate (tried this, but it didn’t work for us – we found it difficult and confusing to use, sorry Pepperdine) – its an online conferencing tool and could be useful when trying to meet in-person is too unrealistic.
• Skype – 4-way voice-conferencing.  Makes sense to me.
• Emails & In-person meetings – it’s hard to rule out tried and true tactics.

The biggest challenge we faced as a team was finding the TIME to meet because most of us have classes on weekday nights, and if you’re not in the same class, its likely that you have classes on different nights.  Imagine trying to meet when some people have classes on Mondays and Tuesdays while others have class on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  Don’t forget about scheduling in a life.  Just some food for thought.

…in the last 3 weeks – Intent to Graduate Form. One of my peers in Strategy just sent out an email with the form attached along with a little pep talk for the rest of the tri, and in her own words, “the light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter!”

I also recently attended a welcome reception for new students that was put together by Faye Porche, the Advisor to students at the West LA Campus. It was an initimate gathering of “OB” students from another class, and my Global Capital Markets class which is made up of primarily 4th-6th trimester students. Everyone had numbered name tags so that there was mix of 1st year OB students with the 2nd year finance students at each table. It was nice trying to help the new students with their questions about the program… Who to take classes from, who not to take classes from, how did I choose an emphasis, what emphasis, etc… On top of sharing my experience with others, it really was a chance to reflect on the last 2 years. Amazing how quickly it all goes by, though it’s not over yet…

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to my job so I can finish my case write up after work tonight (exciting Friday night!) for my 8:00am Saturday class tomorrow, do a second case write up for Strategy later Saturday after class while preparing for my Strategy group meeting Sunday morning, and read about 150 pages on Monday night because I’m not going to miss the Seahawks’ beatdown of the 4 & 9′ers Sunday afternoon.

So here I am, at the start of Fall Trimester and I am incredibly excited.  I decided to ease the load a bit this trimester and only take one class – Marketing.  It certainly is a far cry from my Econ and Accounting classes last trimester (it’s safe to say I survived and even aced my finals!  Thought I was in trouble for a bit there).  I can say with confidence that Marketing is definitely more my forte than number crunching, so that myth you hear about MBA-ers being all math-minded?  False!

I know people who choose to lighten their load or take an entire trimester off for various reasons, but my reason is because I’m getting married this coming November, and I wanted to be able to enjoy this next life stage without the worries of school weighing on me.  My wedding date actually falls around midterms and the week after my honeymoon happens to be finals week!  I just wasn’t willing to sacrifice my sanity to get through this program as fast as possible.  We all have different capacities though, you just have to know what’s best for you and understand how much you can (or are willing to) handle.

I almost ended up dropping Marketing too because the syllabus stated that 20% of our grade was based on participation (usually participation grades are calculated based on attendance).  On top of that, it also said that it is very likely that we’ll drop an entire grade if we miss more than one class.  I had a mini heart attack reading that because I was looking so forward to Marketing and having at least one class with the people I had grown so close to at Pepperdine this past year.  I knew I’d be missing 2 weeks due to the honeymoon, so I immediately emailed my Professor explaining my situation.  We figured out a way to work around my situation, thank goodness!  Lesson Learned: look for every alternative possible before giving up, especially if you’re in the Fully Employed Program.  Most Professors understand that their students need to travel for work or whatnot and will work around your schedule.

A huge reason I chose Pepperdine’s program was for its flexibility – many other Fully Employed MBA Programs (UCI, UCLA) require their students to stay in the same cohort for the entire 2-3 years they’re in the program and not deviate from a set schedule.  If “life happens” for you, Pepperdine is great at accomodating and working around your needs.  Even though I’m only taking one class this trimester, I can still “catch up” and graduate within 2 years if I really wanted to.  Pepperdine offers one week trips abroad after every trimester that you can take for 2 units, so if I go on 2 of those, it easily makes up one class.  Another option is to take on 3 classes in one trimester (you’ll need a 3.5 gpa and permission first though).  So all is not lost if something comes up and you still want to graduate as soon as possible!