Richard Shreve, a professor at the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration led a discussion on leadership ethics on Saturday by presenting various ethical dilemmas and asking students to discuss them.
The session, titled "Ethics in Leadership," was part of the this weekend's Ivy League Leadership Symposium and involved about 20 undergraduates from all of the Ivy League schools.
To illustrate the variety of ways to think about ethical problems, Shreve constructed a case study featuring a committee that must select between two candidates for a community service prize.
The recipient, in Shreve's example, is a good friend that is clearly more deserving, but who disclosed to only you that she lied to pad her application.
Theresa Ellis '97, co-chair of the Ivy League Symposium, said that the lie should be exposed to the committee on principle.
But Francisco del Valle, president of the political union at Yale University, said, "I have a problem with absolute morality."
"When it comes down to what you value there are shades of gray," he said.
Shreve said Ellis' position follows one of three possible ethical views -- one in which choices are a matter of universal moral definition.
Another of Shreve's scenarios featured 10 hostages in an isolated jungle, where a person is given the choice of arbitrarily shooting one of the hostages so that the others might live.
Columbia University senior Peter Freedman argued to kill one of the hostages to save the others.
Shreve called this second view of ethics utilitarian, or serving "the greatest good for the greatest number."
Shreve called the third and final way of thinking he presented Aristotlean, a view in which one's own values and self-image are prioritized.
"We are in the process of defining ourselves everyday," Shreve said.
Shreve said there is no set definition of what ethical behavior is.
"I don't think there's a formula," Shreve said.
"You ask yourself if how you are behaving is consistent with who you intend to be," he said
Marene Jennings '98, one of Dartmouth's representatives at the conference, said the discussion separated "realism from idealism."
"It's easy to take the moral highroad," she said. "But it's not always right."
Shreve's presentation was a highlight of the symposium, Ellis said.
"Given that everyone was coming in after a very full afternoon, he really engaged people," Ellis said.
"A lot of really good things came out," she said.
Shreve is also the chaplain at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.
