Ormond College students Hamish McLean, Claudia Thomas and Harry Collins won the Undergraduate Division 4 (full presentation) of the International Business Ethics Case Competition (IBECC) held in Boston, 18-20 April 2018. The team also came runner up in Undergraduate Division 2 (10 minute presentation) and Undergraduate Division 1 (90 second competition).

IBECC 2018 winners Harry Collins, Claudia Thomas and Hamish McLean

The competition included 40 teams from seven different countries, including high profile universities from Oxford, Hong Kong, Florida and Illinois.

To qualify to represent Ormond in Boston, the winning team had to beat nine other Ormond teams.

Tackling a real life case study

Teams were free to choose their topic. Ormond chose ‘Facilitating Ethical Business Practise in a World of Facilitation Payments.’

“The true crux of this case became the ethical dilemma: can it be morally justified to pay a facilitation payment to protect commercial interests, and if so, does that support an on-going culture of corruption and bribery,” said Harry Collins.

KPMG lends practical support

Our team was sponsored by KPMG, but the sponsorship was much more than financial. KPMG provided a real-life ethical business case study for the students to solve. Students were also coached by KPMG business executives. KPMG Partner, Joel Lucas, said the firm was impressed with the students’ enthusiasm and commitment to the program.

“Our Directors and Associate Directors were very impressed by the willingness of the students to respond to the coaching and develop new skills through the process. All businesses face ethical dilemmas, many of which have no easy answers.  Providing case studies based on some of the complex business challenges we have faced has been a great opportunity to expose the students to some real-world examples of such challenges” said Mr Lucas.

For students, access to coaching from experienced professionals was highly valuable. “Our experience working with KPMG helped us create an insightful and thorough response to the case study,” said Claudia Thomas.

Students proud of College commitment to ethics

Students felt a great sense of pride representing Ormond College at the global competition.

“It’s great that we attend a college which values and prioritises ethics so overtly through the Centre for Ethical Leadership, led by Peter Collins. This commitment to ethics was evident when former Master of the College, Rufus Black, now Vice Chancellor at the University of Tasmania, took time out of his busy schedule to call us and give invaluable advice about the case. This was outstanding and reaffirmed in our minds how much Ormond allows its students to pursue any endeavour with the full support of the College” said Hamish McLean.

The success of the team would not have been possible without those working behind the scenes. “We’d like to recognise and thank the staff at Ormond, like Rachel Jenzen and Dr Jeslyn Lim, who supported us right through the IBECC process” said Claudia Thomas.

Congratulations to the students and all involved in helping the team achieve such wonderful results.

This article was originally published via The Centre for Ethical Leadership.