This survey of more than 800 MBAs from 11 leading North American and European schools found a substantial number were willing to forgo some financial benefits to work for an organization with a better reputation for environmental and social responsibility and ethics. The research was by David B. Montgomery of Stanford and Catherine A. Ramus of UC Santa Barbara. In the study, reputation for ethics and caring about employees both rose to the top third of the list of attributes studied, proving to be approximately 77% as important as the top criterion of intellectual challenge. Moreover, more than 97% of the MBAs in the sample said they were willing to forgo financial benefits to work for an organization with a better reputation for corporate social responsibility and ethics.

Last week a new study furnished yet another strong argument for the "doing good is good business" crowd: corporate social responsibility may just help your human resources department snag up-and-coming MBAs without sending first-year salaries through the roof. Researchers found that a surprising number of recent business-school grads were willing to earn less to work for more socially conscious companies.