How Business Schools and Faculty Can Use the
GIVING VOICE TO VALUES Curriculum
Giving Voice to Values (GVV) is a multi-year program of research, dialogue and curriculum
development focused on current and emerging leaders in the corporate sector. The purpose of this
initiative is to identify and analyze the many ways that business practitioners can voice and implement
their values in the face of countervailing pressure, and to share this capacity through a skill-building
curriculum and publications.
Most of us want to bring our “whole selves” to work. Yet, experience and research demonstrate that
many of us will encounter values conflicts in our careers, when the way we want to live and the things
we want to accomplish seem in conflict with the expectations of our clients, our peers, our bosses and/or
our organizations. This initiative is designed to help individuals learn to recognize, clarify, speak and act
on their values when those conflicts arise.
The focus is POST-decision making. It is not about deciding what the right thing to do is or even what
position one is going to take. Rather it is about how a manager raises these issues in an effective manner;
what he/she needs to do and say in order to be heard; and how to correct an existing course of action
when necessary.
Distinctive Features of the Giving Voice to Values Curriculum Include
1. A focus on positive examples of times when folks have found ways to voice, and thereby
implement, their values in the workplace;
2. An emphasis on the importance of finding an alignment between one’s individual sense of purpose
and that of the organization (an alignment which involves self-assessment and a focus on one’s
individual strengths);
3. The opportunity to construct and practice responses to the most frequently heard reasons and
rationalizations for not acting on one’s values;
4. The opportunity to build commitment by providing repeated opportunities for participants to
practice delivering their responses and to learn to provide peer feedback and coaching to enhance
effectiveness.
This material is part of the Giving Voice to Values curriculum collection (www.GivingVoiceToValues.org).
The Aspen Institute was founding partner, along with the Yale School of Management, and incubator for Giving Voice to Values (GVV).
Now Funded by Babson College.
Do not alter or distribute without permission. © Mary C. Gentile, 2010
1
How Business Schools and Faculty Can Use the GIVING VOICE TO VALUES
Curriculum
There are a variety of ways that business schools and business school faculty can use and/or adapt
the GVV Curriculum:
1. Stand-Alone Workshops (e.g., required capstone workshops; voluntary extra-curricular workshops;
etc.);
2. Functional or Topical Modules (e.g., designed to be inserted into existing Core or Elective
Courses, or to be offered as Accompanying Workshops);
3. Dedicated Elective Course;
4. Custom Peer Coaching Program (e.g., training a team of students to develop GVV curriculum
modules and to deliver workshops to other students. This can be structured as a for-credit course, an
independent study, or an extra-curricular activity.);
5. Custom Curriculum Development (e.g., GVV staff can partner with business school/company to
share methodology for GVV curriculum development and/or to develop customized training
materials.)
Each of these offerings is described in more detail below:
Stand-Alone Workshops
There are a number of stand-alone workshops that can be constructed using the existing Giving Voice to
Values materials. For example, “A Tale of Two Stories” and “Giving Voice to Values: Starting
Assumptions” can each be used as the basis for a 1.5 to 2 hour long workshop, introducing the subject of
post-decision making values implementation. Some schools use this type of workshop in their
Orientation programs.
Any of the self-assessment tools identified in “Self-Knowledge and Self-Image” can be used for
introducing a personalized approach to building the muscle for voicing values; for raising the subject of
alignment in career and employer selection; and for selecting the optimal style/approach for voicing
values that will build on an individual’s particular identified strengths. “Framing a Life Story” can be
similarly used as the basis for a values-focused self-assessment workshop.
And of course, any number of the individual case studies can be used as workshop material. All of the
materials noted here include teaching guidelines with suggested questions and/or debrief designs.
Functional or Topical Models
Some values conflicts are common, or even specific, to certain functional areas. For example, questions
of honest communications in advertising or targeted marketing that can become exploitive are specific to
the field of Marketing. Questions regarding responsibility to shareholders and to more broadly defined
groups of stakeholders surface in Finance and Strategy courses. And so on.
This material is part of the Giving Voice to Values curriculum collection (www.GivingVoiceToValues.org).
The Aspen Institute was founding partner, along with the Yale School of Management, and incubator for Giving Voice to Values (GVV).
Now Funded by Babson College.
Do not alter or distribute without permission. © Mary C. Gentile, 2010
2
While discussions of moral deliberation and the application of ethical reasoning models to business
dilemmas are appropriate in stand-alone ethics courses, a focus on how to implement one’s values
commitments with regard to function-specific conflicts is more powerfully addressed in tandem with the
course where the relevant materials are taught. Nevertheless, Management, Finance, Strategy, or
Accounting faculty are sometimes more comfortable teaching about how these conflicts arise and what
we know about their impacts and the relevant rules and regulations surrounding them, than they are
teaching about how to respond to these pressures when they do arise.
Therefore, the GVV Curriculum provides an approach to these issues that builds on the function-specific
strengths of the Management or the Accounting faculty member while providing opportunities for
students to craft and practice responses to the conflicts they are most likely to face in each functional
area. The “Reporting” module (currently available) was written to provide an example of how this
approach would work. The module focuses on honest and accurate reporting, a fundamental concept in
any Accounting course.
This “Reporting” module might be used as a follow-up discussion to an Accounting class where students
have already discussed earnings management. In this Accounting class session, students would be
introduced to the definition of earnings management, the incentives to engage in this practice as well as
the regulations and standards that prohibit it, the consequences of doing so, the strategies for detecting
the practice, etc. Such discussions draw on the expertise of the Accounting professor.
However, a discussion of what to do when pressured to engage in such a practice in the workplace may
or may not draw on a skill and research base within the accounting scholar’s expertise. Nevertheless and
in either case, he or she can set the stage for this implementation discussion by making the costs and
prohibitions against this practice clear. The GVV module on “Reporting” is then used to build on this
material with a targeted discussion that provides a discussion of how to counter such organizational
pressures when they are encountered. This module could be taught by the Accounting professor using
the teaching plans included, or it might be co-taught with another instructor who is versed in the GVV
module teaching plans.
In addition to the “Reporting” module, materials for Corporate Governance, Finance, Management,
Leadership, Career Management, Global Business, Diversity Management, Operations and more are
available now (see below), and new materials are added to the collection on an ongoing basis. Inquiries
about materials and suggestions for new topics or offers to collaborate on their development can be sent
to: Mgentile3@babson.edu
In addition, GVV staff can work with faculty to review their existing functional area syllabi, to identify
ways to apply the GVV approach to existing course readings and/or to integrate GVV materials into the
course.
This material is part of the Giving Voice to Values curriculum collection (www.GivingVoiceToValues.org).
The Aspen Institute was founding partner, along with the Yale School of Management, and incubator for Giving Voice to Values (GVV).
Now Funded by Babson College.
Do not alter or distribute without permission. © Mary C. Gentile, 2010
3
Dedicated Elective Course
The GVV materials can be organized into a stand-alone elective course. A sample outline follows;
however, many variations are possible:
Sample Outline for a Leadership Skill-Building Elective on Giving Voice to Values
Introduction and Course Framework
Examples will be used to demonstrate the “points” of the course: that similarly talented and committed
people facing similar values conflicts may find themselves acting, or not acting, very differently, despite
their intentions; that we ourselves have had both of these experiences; and most importantly, that
explicit skills (like reframing a decision), research insights and very simply the opportunity to practice
speaking and acting on our values can make the difference between the person who voices and acts on
his or her values and the one who does not.
Materials:
 “A Tale of Two Stories” (exercise)
 “Ways of Thinking About Our Values in the Workplace” and “An Action Framework for Giving
Voice to Values – The To-Do List” (readings)
 “Giving Voice to Values: Starting Assumptions” (exercise)
 “Building a Giving Voice to Values Toolkit: Enablers for Voicing Values” (an ongoing exercise)
Self-Discovery and Alignment
Course participants will develop a Personal Profile around such topics as Risk Orientation, Preferred
Style of Communication, Loyalty (To whom/what do you feel the greatest sense of loyalty? Under what
conditions?), Self-Image (Do you identify as shrewd? As ideals-driven? As pragmatic? As a learner or
teacher? etc.), and finally, Purpose (How do you identify your personal purpose? Professional purpose?
Organizational purpose? Societal purpose? Are they in alignment?)
The goal here is for students to develop a “self-story” that allows for acting on their values in conflicted
situations. Our preliminary research suggests that a fundamental enabler for such committed action is an
individual’s ability to see acting on their values as consistent with their explicit and primary agenda.
And furthermore, we saw that the same actions can become aligned with this agenda by refining the way
we frame the challenge.
Materials:
 “ Self-Knowledge and Self-Image” (introduction, sample self-assessment instruments and exercises,
debrief)
 “Framing A Life Story” (reading, exercise, discussion guidelines)
 Possible Case Selections:
o “Lisa Baxter – Developing a Voice”
o “A Personal Struggle with the Definition of Success”
o “The Diversity Consultant (A) and (B)”
o “The Price (A) and (B)”
o “Naivete or Boldness? (A) and (B)”
This material is part of the Giving Voice to Values curriculum collection (www.GivingVoiceToValues.org).
The Aspen Institute was founding partner, along with the Yale School of Management, and incubator for Giving Voice to Values (GVV).
Now Funded by Babson College.
Do not alter or distribute without permission. © Mary C. Gentile, 2010
4
Scripts and Skills
In many ways, this is the heart of the GVV course. Here students have the opportunity to identify
frequently-heard “reasons and rationalizations” for not voicing/acting on one’s values; to practice
crafting effective “scripts” for countering those reasons, drawing on relevant research (both related to
the decision at hand – e.g., earnings management – as well as to strategies for framing choices and
effective communication); to practice actually voicing those scripts; and to learn and practice effective
peer-coaching.
This portion of the course is based on the premise that practice (“doing”) is as important as analysis, and
that it is important for students to do this practice in front of their peers who stand in for the people to
whom they will eventually have to speak their values.
Materials:
 “Scripts and Skills” (introduction, annotated bibliographies, case examples, peer coaching guidelines)
 “Reporting” (short cases, annotated bibliographies, discussion guidelines using various values
conflicts over honest reporting as the occasion for analysis, scripting, practice and peer coaching)
Commitment
In this final section of the course, students will have the opportunity to summarize, integrate and
internalize the learning’s from their self discovery and their practice sessions with script development
and delivery. They will have the chance to consider their own motivation and commitment to applying
these lessons. This will be done through a combination of analysis and example.
Materials:
 Revisit “Building a Giving Voice to Values Toolkit: Enablers for Voicing Values,” “Framing a Life
Story” and any self assessment tools used from “Self- Knowledge and Self-Image.”
 Use guest lecturers, fiction and/or film to provide palpable exemplars and inspiration. (fiction/film
suggestions available upon request)
 Students will have the opportunity to make a commitment to themselves, and potentially to each other,
about their future actions by sharing short presentations from their final papers. The paper
assignment can be to present a brief case scenario describing a specific workplace values conflict
from their own experience, and to share the analysis and action plan and “script” for voicing and
acting on their values. The best of these final papers can be used as materials for future versions of
the course, and/or submitted for review and possible inclusion in the GVV Case Collection.
Custom Peer Coaching Program
One or more teams of students (most likely second year MBA students) can be trained to develop
custom GVV cases and/or deliver GVV workshops to other students. GVV staff can serve as facilitators
for training the student teams and/or work with on-site faculty/trainers to prepare them to work with
student teams.
This material is part of the Giving Voice to Values curriculum collection (www.GivingVoiceToValues.org).
The Aspen Institute was founding partner, along with the Yale School of Management, and incubator for Giving Voice to Values (GVV).
Now Funded by Babson College.
Do not alter or distribute without permission. © Mary C. Gentile, 2010
5
Custom Curriculum Development
GVV staff may share the GVV curriculum development methodology with business schools or
companies, so that their own faculty or staff can prepare GVV cases customized to particular
faculty/student or company interests. Alternatively, GVV staff may be engaged to develop custom
materials and/or to provide faculty development or train-the-trainer programs for schools or companies.
Last Revised: 02/28/2010
This material is part of the Giving Voice to Values curriculum collection (www.GivingVoiceToValues.org).
The Aspen Institute was founding partner, along with the Yale School of Management, and incubator for Giving Voice to Values (GVV).
Now Funded by Babson College.
Do not alter or distribute without permission. © Mary C. Gentile, 2010
6