July 22, 2008 - Want to attract top talent but can't afford to bump up starting salaries? Try boosting your triple bottom line instead, a new survey of elite MBAs suggests.

The study of 759 graduating MBAs at 11 top business schools, conducted by Stanford Graduate School of Business and UC Santa Barbara, found respondents ranked a company's ethical conduct nearly on a par with salary. (Money and location tied for second among job-choice priorities, behind "intellectual challenge.")

"I was frankly surprised that ethics and caring about people came up so important as they did, says researcher David Montgomery. "This augurs well for the character of the 21st century MBA."

The survey broke down "corporate responsibility" into four categories: caring about employees, caring for stakeholders (such as community residents), environmental sustainability, and ethical business conduct.

The researchers found that while students expect to earn an average of $103,650 a year at their first job, nearly all (97.3%) say they would be willing to make a financial sacrifice of about $14,902 a year to work for a company that exhibited all four characteristics of social responsibility.

Montgomery concedes that the students may have inflated the dollar amounts they would be willing to sacrifice, but because those numbers run parallel with other data within the study, he said he believes discrepancies to be small.