Calibrating MBA job preferences for the 21st century

Abstract

Our research studies what MBAs in the 21st century care about during their job searches. We update the MBA job preference literature by using adaptive conjoint analysis to calibrate the relative importance of a variety of job factors found in previous research in disparate fields (management, applied psychology, corporate social performance, ethics, and marketing). Our results show the relative importance of organizational reputation related to caring for employees, ethical products/practices, and social and environmental responsibility, compared to factors such as financial package, job challenge, etc., to a sample of 759 MBAs graduating from 11 business schools-8 in North America and 3 in Europe.