Week #1, Blog Entry #1:         Business Ethics, Leadership, and Marginal Analysis

 

Since completing my medical doctoral degree in 1991, my only online educational experiences have been taking continuing medical education courses, which have a different structure and no similarity to rigorous university studies. This first week of my new journey, I have gotten accustomed to the university’s online educational experience through a multitude of learning tools and platforms. CANVAS is an impressive platform that allows students to gather learning materials (including book readings, videos, and articles), as well as the ability to interact with fellow students and teachers in class discussions. Group discussions have been an invaluable part of this learning process. During this first week of my MBA journey, I learned many new business concepts and developed a new understanding of others that I had some rudimentary knowledge. Course material has covered the basic concepts of business, economics, and ethics.

Business

We have learned about the purpose of business, and how to assess the business value of assets, liabilities, earnings, market conditions, growth, and management through the analysis and interpretation of financial statements (balance sheets, income, and cash flow statements). Income statements signal the profitability of a business, while balance sheets and cash flow statements show the current financial position and movement of cash of a company. It has been crucial to distinguish the main differences between accounting values and economic values: accounting values use the total revenues and explicit costs while economic values include various implicit and opportunity costs in the valuation (Tilles, 2025).

Economics: Marginal Analysis and Supply and Demand

We have also started to use marginal analysis through MBAmath.com to understand the mathematical equations for business profitability, and breakeven revenue and quantity in business. Have covered marginal, variable, and fixed costs, the definition of sunk and opportunity costs, and marginal and total profits. We have also discussed the supply and demand theories and have learned to calculate the breakeven point and outputs.

Business Vision, Mission, Purpose, and Leadership

We learned about the purposes of businesses to develop a vision, a mission, and a purpose to guide employees and business leaders in operations. The vision is an aspirational statement of the business direction through time, while the mission and purpose are more concrete statements on how to get to the vision over time (Tilles, 2025). We touched on leadership styles and effective leadership. Concepts related to the impact and responsibilities leaders must be effective communicators and be able to balance authority with autonomy. The concept of Significant Choice developed by Thomas Nielsen points to the importance of leadership openness and candor in having difficult conversations (McCombs, 2019). The importance of honesty and transparency in leadership facilitates sound decision-making processes and promotes ethical behavior in an organization. These statements should be the guiding principles over which businesses should develop a social contract and an internal code of ethics.

Business Ethics

We also discussed the concepts of business ethics and ethical leadership. Although I have studied medical ethics in some depth through formal fellowship training, business ethics is significantly different with a distinct set of conditions and implications. Business is an ethical endeavor (Kline, 2021). Business ethics is complicated by the variety of businesses in the market and the many “creative ways” in which leaders and businesses violate business ethics principles. Ethical violations account for 39% of all CEO business departures, including fraud, bribery, sexual misconduct, insider trading, etc. (Allyn, 2019). Transparency, accountability, and effective communication are key factors for leaders to display to develop cohesive team building in an organization. In our first discussion assignment, I posted two articles about fraud and violations of business ethics in funeral homes and private equity firms involved in healthcare. The funeral home article involved deceptive practices to consumers and violation of the scope of consent in business (Mosbergen, 2024). The second article discussed the predatory practices of some private equity firms involved in healthcare transactions that are using debt leveraging to have hospitals obtain financial loans while mitigating the equity firm risk, shifting the financial burden to hospitals and other healthcare facilities, and pressuring these institutions to cut costs to survive, placing patient care and healthcare works in jeopardy (Cumming, 2025). These practices are currently under investigation by the federal government due to their harmful effects on public health, while violating their business social contract with society (Karri, 2021). Some states have started to enact legislation to regulate private equity investment in healthcare to safeguard public health and trust.

In conclusion, I am excited about all I have learned during this first week, and I am looking forward to learning new concepts and training in the coming weeks. It is fascinating to see how business and medicine interact with each other. Through my journey, I look forward to having a deeper understanding of how to implement business solutions in the delivery of medical care to improve the quality of care of the patients we serve.

References:

Tilles, O. (2025). Lecture on Introduction to Business Fundamentals. BUS 501, Business Perspectives. University of Illinois Springfield, IL.

Karri, R. (2021). Lecture on Business Ethics. Personal Collection of R. Karri, University of Illinois Springfield, IL. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1gCC10O-RCIvBgU2GalPfoMlnFJ_tI28j-bWiDUyerk0/edit#slide=id.gab315755a6_0_14

Kline, W. (2021). Lecture on Applied Ethics. University of Illinois Springfield, IL.

McCombs School of Business. (2019, Feb. 19). Being Your Best Self, Part 1: Moral Awareness | Concepts Unwrapped.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snm01IG_PHU

McCombs School of Business. (2019, Feb. 19). Being Your Best Self, Part 2: Moral Decision Making | Concepts Unwrapped.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZ2l89wEIwM

Allyn, B. (2019, May 21). Top reason for CEO departures among largest companies is now misconduct, study finds. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2019/05/20/725108825/top-reason-for-ceo-departures-among-largest-companies-is-now-misconduct-study-fi

Mosbergen, D. (2024, Feb. 5). How the Funeral Industry Got the FTC to Hide Bad Actors. The Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/business/how-the-funeral-industry-got-the-ftc-to-hide-bad-actors-b0028ac3?st=ZFJoSW&reflink=article_copyURL_shareLinks to an external site.

Cumming, C. (2025, Jan. 8). Senate Report Blasts Private Equity’s Role in Healthcare. The Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/senate-report-blasts-private-equitys-role-in-healthcare-b77d711f?st=fHkhXU&reflink=article_copyURL_shareLinks to an external site.