| Home / College Guide / Penn State Smeal team wins integrity case competition |
| Posted on Friday, December 06 @ 00:00:11 PST |
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A team of students from the Penn State Smeal College of Business placed first in the annual Business with Integrity Case Competition.
The competition is meant to give students a real-life opportunity to apply values to business decisions. Participants chose a luxury brand to focus on so that they could improve their relationships with customers, maximize profits and contribute positively to society.
The case competition began with 66 teams consisting of students from varying majors across all of Penn State, including representation from Commonwealth Campuses. The finals consisted of three teams. Ultimately the KS Consulting team won.
The KS Consulting team consisted of Brenna Boer, a second-year student majoring in marketing; Garret Weber, a third-year student majoring in finance; Joseph Li, a third-year student majoring in finance; and Noa Becker, a third-year student majoring in accounting.
The team ultimately chose the luxury brand Dior due to the reported discovery this past summer of unethical labor practices at one of the companys suppliers.
“Dior was a relevant company to pick because this investigation was so recent,” Boer said.
In their argument, the team included two main points: inside-out linkages, or how a business’s operations affect society, and outside-in linkages, which are how broader society affects the business.
For their inside-out linkages, the team considered many things, including strategic investment and workers. For their outside-in linkages, they considered macroeconomic environments and regulations. While coming up with these points they needed to find an intersection between inside-out and outside-in linkages to discuss.
“The intersection of these consists of two elements: workers and regulations,” Li said.
The primary sponsor for the case competition was the Tariff Center for Business Ethics and Social Responsibility. The mission of the Tarriff Center is to advance Smeal’s commitment to honor and integrity by providing education, research and thought leadership to build tomorrow’s responsible business leaders.
Smeal also partnered with the Rock Ethics Institute, part of Penn State’s College of the Liberal Arts, which promotes ethics, research and ethical leadership.
“The Rock Ethics Institute provides support that enables us to engage students beyond Smeal,” said Michelle Darnell, director of the Tariff Center for Business Ethics and Social Responsibility and Smeal’s director of honor and integrity.
Support also was provided by the Tom and Linda Buday Purposeful Brands Excellence Fund.
“Without partnerships within specific departments, we will not be able to combat the false beliefs that ethics is external to day-to-day operations, as though it is something like a ‘box’ that gets checked and then it is ‘done,’” Darnell said.
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