KBS Mission in Korean Cultural Context
In an economic and cultural context, as a rapidly developing country, Korea is in many senses at a crossroads. While on one hand, according to infrastructure and by purely economic standards, Korea can be considered a developed country, on another hand, in terms of corporate culture, gender norms and corruption indexes in some more intangible respects Korea still lags behind developed standards. In response to this, there is increasing call for Korea to embrace values of an economic democracy, a socioeconomic philosophy that proposes to shift decision-making power from corporate managers and corporate stakeholders to a larger group of public stakeholders including workers, customers, suppliers and the broader public. Moreover, in 2012, the passage of the Improper Solicitation and Graft Act holds any civil servant including professors who accept one thousand dollars or more accountable for up to three years in jail, regardless of whether the money was related to official duties or whether favors were granted as quid pro quo. In July of 2016, the Constitutional Court ruled that a sweeping new Graft Act is constitutional thereby rejecting petitions challenging its scope and vagueness.
KBS Mission Story
The realities of Korea as a nation led KBS to evaluate core responsibilities related to our mission as an institution of higher education. To this end, KBS faculty felt that the phrasing “to lead and contribute to a globalized world in a responsible and practical manner” is more representative of our institutional mission. Accordingly, we define our mission to act in a responsible manner and core value of integrity in the context of not what is just legally binding, but more what is appropriate and desired behavior on a global, societal, corporate and school level.
Hence, as a business school, KBS has a duty to instill values of responsibility in future leaders. In our view, responsibility includes a scope including transparent hiring practices and with merit-based promotion, BOD governance that is truly connected to shareholder interest, strategically aligned corporate social responsibility and gender-sensitive HR hiring practices. On a school level, as an institution KBS seeks to cultivate values of responsibility in faculty through mandatory education such as prevention of sexual harassment, cross checking graduate student papers with anti-plagiarism software, emphasis on appropriate use of research funds and responsible authorship when faculty publish research with graduate students. Likewise, on a student level, KBS seeks to instill students with a sense of integrity and values of responsibility through policies that prevent cheating, rules and regulations to prevent free-riding in courses and enforced anti-alcohol consumption policies for school sponsored trips and events such as the annual festival. KBS hopes that students will in turn embrace values of organizational citizenship and contribute back to Konkuk and become engaged alumni.