The Power of Exemplarity: the Ethics of Quality applied to Education

What is the link between Business Ethics and Quality Management?

Business Ethics is stemming from philosophy and morals while Quality Management has grown from management empirical research. Those two subjects are two sides of the same medal. Quality makes visible the transparency of Business Ethics. The implementation of quality management system goes with the deployment of systematic controls, responsibility checking, KPI board documents and trainings. Those processes are deeply linked to social dynamical aspects. The success of Quality Management depends then on the team behaviour, commitment and responsibility taking. When people consciously decide to do the right thing at the right time, in other words to act ethically, everyone wins. The social dynamical aspects are a crucial element of the success of quality process management.

Reality shows that there are gaps in Total Quality Management. No system can control every and single aspects of a process. That’s where ethics kicks in and backs up the quality method. At the core of ethics is the concept of responsibility, the ability to be accountable for either the credits or the blame. It means having individuals that can give answers that go beyond the reference of the process or the rules of the game. The terrible unproductive common sentence is “I don’t know, that’s how we do it simply” and the quality decreased. As educators, we are supported by programs, guided by syllabus, evaluated by management but amongst those quality process, what is key, is the individual responsibility we take to accompany and encourage our students one by one. The personal deontology to find any solutions to do the best possible.

Growing personal ethics is a massive work, as it is rooted in personal belief and education but research on empowerment and autonomy shows that in a climate of trust, teams perform better, that they take more responsibility, and as consequences the quality increased overall. The challenge is to both manage quality processes control and the freedom to exercise responsibility.

The power of exemplarity in education

Rabelais, a French philosopher of the 16^th century was warning us “Science with conscience is nothing but the ruin of the soul”. The last century painfully proved him right. Even if we don’t refer to the soul of our students anymore per se, the nowadays moral ethics, mental health and career purpose challenges echo the concept of conscience. Consciously reshaping education to face global concerns for the modern societies is the task of educators. Interestingly, it is actually what students expect from  Higher Education. As part of the QS Sustainability Ranking 2023, 3000 students advocated that the top values they would like to see in a university they study are “supporting and respecting human rights”, “commitments to ethical working practices” and “Ambitions to become a carbon neutral company”. Additionally, nearly half (49%) of the participants believe a university’s social impact to be very important when deciding which institution to study. Unpacking the QS statistics: students want to learn exemplarity in exemplar universities.

To conclude, one could believe that living in a world of collective irresponsibility and narrow self-interest encourages passivity and the loose of the soul as Rabelais names it. It is educators’ moral obligation to equip the next leaders with academic knowledge rooted in quality management and ethics. This is necessary to reach exemplarity management that the planet and humankind craves for. Curriculars and courses will constantly evolve with content such as diversity and inclusion, sustainability, innovation, entrepreneurship, and so many fantastic ones, however the value of Exemplarity is the corner stone education.

This article was published in the 1st QS Insights Magazine - https://lnkd.in/ef5yh39c