Diane Swanson
Edgerley Family Chair in Business Administration and professor of management
In response to corporate scandals like Enron and Arthur Andersen, Diane Swanson, professor
of management and von Waaden business administration professor, spearheaded a national
campaign in 2003 that emphasized the importance of ethics in business education.
Swanson asserts that business schools should do their part to ensure that students are exposed to road maps for ethical decision-making. Swanson's campaign, which was covered by national and international press, earned the endorsements of three conference boards and more than 200 professors, ethicists and business professionals.
Swanson is frequently invited to speak to audiences of university administrators, professors and corporate executives on the importance of ethics education and ethics in practice. In May 2010 she presented to an audience from several universities and junior colleges across four states in the inaugural workshop on business ethics education, part of a new initiative sponsored by a grant from the Daniels Fund. Each summer she teaches ethics course work to executive managers in a program hosted by Dartmouth College.
A business ethics instructor and researcher, Swanson has evaluated executive pay levels to find that those executives who downplay ethics in their decision-making also prefer salaries that are extraordinary multiples of what the lowest-paid employees earn. She also specializes in research on executive leadership, value-based culture and corporate social responsibility.
Swanson joined K-State in 1997. She graduated with highest distinction with a doctorate in business administration from the Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh (Pa.) in 1996. She graduated with honors in the economics master's program from the University of Missouri at Kansas City in 1982.
She was appointed the Edgerley Family Chair of Business Administration in 2012 and is working to develop the national reputation of the college.
Swanson has earned numerous awards for teaching and research excellence. She received the Best Article Award in 2001 from the International Association for Business and Society in conjunction with the journal California Management Review, and the Best Ethics Educator Award from Colorado State University, University of Colorado at Boulder and University of Wyoming in 2004. Widely cited as the author of more than 70 publications, she currently serves on the editorial boards of the top-ranked journals Business Ethics Quarterly, Academy of Management Review, Business & Society and Asia Pacific and Globalization Review. She also served as an associate editor for the five-volume Encyclopedia of Business Ethics in Society, which won two national awards in 2009, and as the book review editor for the International Journal of Organizational Analysis.
Swanson has published three books: "Toward Integrative Corporate Citizenship" in 2008, which was co-authored with Marc Orlitzky of Penn State University; "Advancing Business Ethics Education" in 2008, which was co-edited with Dann Fisher, K-State associate professor of accounting; and "Toward Assessing Business Ethics Education" in 2010, also co-edited with Fisher.
Swanson can be contacted at 785-532-4352 or swanson@k-state.edu.