This course (1) explores basic ethical theories, and (2) examines them as a foundation for determining the rightness or wrongness of various decisions and practices in business. We will focus on specific cases and examples. The fact that there is no one universal set of behaviors considered ethical and no one set of guidelines considered correct poses unique challenges to determining the ethics of business decisions and conduct. But the business world is continually confronted with ethical challenges, situations in which the values and ethics of individuals may conflict with those of the teams or organizations they work for. This course probes ethical topics and issues which people in business face in their workplaces. Among the topics covered are corporate responsibility, and conflicts of interest between public interest and the interests of business, the rights of employees, the ethics of advertising, and the morality of information disclosure.
Fall and Spring.