"The School of Business and Economics at SPU

is distinguished by its dedication to mission and vision."

The Princeton Review, 2008

A Guiding Vision - Another Way of Doing Business
Since its inception, the School of Business and Economics at Seattle Pacific University has built an exceptional business education on a solid foundation of ethics and values. This was true long before Enron and its progeny made ethics a popular topic in business schools; it will still be true long after the current fashion fades. All graduate business students in our programs will take two required ethics classes. For undergraduates, business ethics is the program's capstone course.  In all of the rest of their courses, graduate and undergraduate students will find that the faculty integrates ethical issues throughout the curriculum. We also operate a Center for Integrity in Business and publish Ethix, an international journal.

While this continues to be the foundation for our program, we have recently been asking bigger, first-order questions concerning the appropriate purpose of business within society. Most traditional business schools teach that the purpose of business is, first and foremost, to maximize shareholder value. In this regard, many schools teach that a manager's ethical treatment of employees and customers may be justified because these behaviors tend to increase efficiencies and yield higher profits. Thus, employees and customers are treated as means to enhancing the shareholder wealth.

In what we have come to characterize as "Another Way of Doing Business," we turn this traditional understanding of the purpose of business on its head. As we see it, the highest purpose of business is to serve: to serve customers by providing them the goods they need to flourish, and to serve employees by providing opportunities for meaningful work. For us, profit is, indeed, critically important but not as an "end" in and of itself. For us, profit is the means of attracting the capital needed to enable businesses to pursue their highest purpose of service.

This service-orientation has a number of implications. It suggests that the success of a corporation should be measured by more than its financial bottom-line. It suggests that a manager should pursue more than the best possible alignment with market forces. It suggests that business should embrace the place of other appropriate institutions such as family and government. These, and many other implications, are explored in our program. Over the course of your studies, you will be invited to consider this approach as a meaningful alternative to the traditional shareholder-first model and to select, for yourself, an appropriate understanding of the role of business in society that will guide your future behavior as a business leader.

Another Way of Doing Business - Purpose, Practice & Partnership brochure.

Dr. Jeff Van Duzer's video on Another Way of Doing Business at the Faith and Leadership site of the Duke Divinity School.