Penn State Smeal Ethics Case Team continues run of success in competition

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — For the fifth year in a row, the Penn State Smeal College of Business Ethics Case Team brought a championship back to Happy Valley from the International Business Ethics Case Competition (IBECC).

Team captain Angela Lam Li, who graduated with a degree in marketing last Saturday, led a team that included three sophomores: marketing major Brenna Boer, management major Tyler Scher and management and Master of Accounting dual major Noa Becker.

The 2025 IBECC was hosted by San Francisco State University. The competition aims to enhance students’ teamwork and presentation skills while addressing complex ethical issues in today’s business landscape.

The IBECC is unique in that each team is responsible for developing its own ethical issue to address, and is broken into three separate competitions:

• A 25-minute competition in which each team prepares a PowerPoint presentation and speaks for 25 minutes on the problem it investigated and the solutions it developed. Teams analyze the financial, legal and ethical considerations of the problem and solution.
• A 10-minute presentation with two to three team members. Teams are not allowed to use PowerPoint and are asked to speak solely on the ethical issues of their problem and solution.
• A student, acting as an employee, joins executives in a conference room to discuss an issue without anyone addressing its ethical aspects. The student has 90 seconds to convince the group to acknowledge and address the problem as an ethical issue.

Smeal placed first in the 25-minute and 90-second presentations and placed second in the second place in the 10-minute presentation. Boer handled the 90-second presentation.

Smeal focused this year’s case on ZYN oral nicotine patches, According to the team, ZYN’s recent rapid surge in popularity relied on ambiguous messaging that unintentionally increased use among underage Americans, a vulnerable population who may not yet understand the larger effects of nicotine. The Smeal team worked with the executive team responsible for ZYN products, exploring how a proactive shift in marketing could help protect this vulnerable population while also helping to build trust between the company, the government and consumers. They also argued that trust is the essential ethical component necessary for transactions to take place in the free market.