BYU Places Second in Ethics Competition

PROVO, Utah – Dec 14, 2016 – In a twenty-three-hour turnaround, a team of four MBA students from Brigham Young University won second place and $1,200 in Baylor University’s Business Ethics Case Competition, the first time a BYU team has placed in the competition.

“We are very proud of what they accomplished,” says Brad Owens, Romney Institute associate professor. “This year's team had a very high level of competence and drive, but perhaps more importantly they seemed humble and unified. There was very little ego on the team and I believe that is why they gelled and performed so well.”

The BYU team consisted of second-year students Autumn Wagner from Fairview, Texas; Chace Jones from Centerville, Utah; and Kyle Taylor from Kaysville, Utah; and JD/MBA student Erika Nash from Holladay, Utah.

Before ever stepping foot on Baylor’s campus, the students spent hours together going over old cases, giving each other homework and research assignments, receiving feedback from ethics and strategy professors, creating timelines, and collecting around twenty frameworks to work through in order to maximize their limited hours of allotted preparation time they would have during the competition.

“The preparation we did beforehand was extremely helpful when we were navigating the complexities of the case,” Nash says. “We were able to anticipate a lot.”

The students traveled to Waco, Texas, where they were presented with an ethical dilemma and asked to deliver a credible solution twenty-three hours later. After working through the night (with one cupcake interruption), the four team members collectively logged eleven hours of sleep and got up for their first round of presentations the next morning.

Their efforts were rewarded when they were declared finalists, and after a final presentation they were awarded second place.

“Working with this team was one of the highlights of my MBA experience,” Jones says. “We had to dig deep, challenge our understanding, and come up with creative solutions to a core issue that was causing multiple symptom issues. We prayed together, we worked together, and we presented in seamless unity.”

The Marriott School is located at Brigham Young University, the largest privately owned, church-sponsored university in the United States. The school has nationally recognized programs in accounting, business management, entrepreneurship, finance, information systems and public management. The school’s mission is to prepare men and women of faith, character and professional ability for positions of leadership throughout the world. Approximately 3,300 students are enrolled in the Marriott School’s graduate and undergraduate programs.