Although recent headlines suggest that business and ethics are unlikely bedfellows, one team of Memorial business students has proven their ethics acumen at a competition in Halifax, N.S.

Team members Samantha Attwood, Katie Mercer, Amy Pollard, Jacob White and Erin Gullage (spare) finished in third place in the Dalhousie Business Ethics Case Competition.

The competition, which took place between Nov. 13-15, saw the students analyzing and making recommendation on complex topics like the implications of a struggling company pulling their business out of a one-industry town.

Ms. Mercer was proud of the group accomplishment.

“The teams we were competing against were all fourth and fifth year students, and our team was made up of two senior students and two second year students,” she said. “We worked hard and I’m really happy with how we preformed in the competition.”

Faculty advisor, Dr. Tom Cooper, said the team was able to demonstrate and explain the link between managing ethics and responsibility along with traditional business objectives such as value and wealth creation.

“Creating fair-trade products (as they did in one case) as well as managing the triple-bottom line (profits, environment and social responsibility) are examples of the topics the team dealt with in the competition,” explained Dr. Cooper.

“What impressed me was how they were able to manage the business as well as the wider ethics and responsibility issues in the cases they analyzed and presented. They showed that the recommendations presented did not need to be mutually exclusive and, instead, business can gain from looking at the wider picture in developing their strategy and managing their stakeholders.”

As third place winners, the team took home $1,000 to be used by Memorial in a socially responsible manner.

The team from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario captured top prize.