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Thunderbird Oath makes headlines amid crisisThunderbird Oath makes headlines amid crisis

Thunderbird’s Oath of Honor and emphasis on sustainable value creation have made international news in recent weeks as business schools come under increased scrutiny amid a global economic crisis.

“Our oath establishes a commitment to respect the rights and dignity of all people affected by the corporation,” Thunderbird President Ángel Cabrera, Ph.D., told one reporter for a National Public Radio program that aired May 17. “It establishes a commitment to combat corruption. I have no doubt that if we were successful at creating a consensus around a set of principles across business schools around the world, decisions would have been quite different right now."

Cabrera has made similar statements in interviews and guest columns for the New York Times, TIME magazine, El País, the Arizona Republic and other media outlets. He has taken a stand on the issue in an online debate hosted by Harvard Business Review,  and he called for MBA reform April 27 in a one-on-one debate with Purdue business school dean Richard A. Cosier, the head of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business.

That debate came during the AACSB global conference in Orlando, Fla., the largest annual gathering of business educators in the world.

“Many of the leaders of the failed financial institutions hold advanced degrees from the finest business schools in the world,” Cabrera has said. “These individuals destroyed billions of dollars in shareholder and taxpayer money — not by ignoring what they learned in business school, but by carefully and systematically applying the tools and frameworks we taught them.”

TIME magazine reporter Justin Fox visited Thunderbird on May 1 to meet Cabrera and watch for himself as 278 graduates recited the Oath of Honor during commencement exercises near campus in Glendale, Ariz. Fox’s report, included in a May 15 cover package called The Future of Work, compares Thunderbird’s first-of-its-kind pledge to the Hippocratic Oath that binds medical professionals to high ethical standards. Watch TIME's video about Thunderbird School of Global Management.

Cabrera, who recruited Thunderbird students to draft the oath when he arrived as president in 2004, has long compared business managers to medical and legal professionals. As a United Nations volunteer, he took a leading role in the development of the Principles for Responsible Management Education endorsed by 229 business schools worldwide — including Thunderbird.

“We need to look at management as a true profession and compare it to medicine and law,” Cabrera said in the NPR report. “Professionals exist to serve the greater good, and they have codes of conduct to minimize the harm they can do to society."

For more on this topic, visit Cabrera's Global Leadership blog on the Thunderbird Knowledge Network.