Business Ethics

Purpose: Business Ethics is intended to ground the student in an understanding of ethics that business leaders need. This includes an ethical vision and grasp of core enduring principles, and the ability to explicate these and implement them with others that they lead in a world that faces the twin challenges of rapidly changing technological and cultural contexts and multiplicity of relativistic ethical accounts. How do we think, act and lead with ethical vision if people have different views of ethics? Is persuasion and winning people over with arguments possible? To explore and understand these questions practically the course aims to combine both a theoretical grasp of the nature and working of ethics with the prescriptions we need to be guided by in business: both the philosophy and the practice of ethics for the world of business.

It will introduce the elements of ethical reasoning, and several principal concepts of core theories in the main branches of normative ethics as a foundation for ethics driven leadership. These include utilitarianism, Kantian duty ethics and the ideas of the virtue and natural law ethical tradition stemming from Aristotle and Aquinas. A brief overview of theories of justice (including those of Rawls, Nozick and Sen) will be made. Some of paradigmatic issues and situations in three areas which confront businesses in a series of case studies under the headings: Profit, People, Planet. These will explore though practical cases the application of the foregoing ideas in relation to the themes of business duties and corporate social responsibility (Profit), labour rights and equality (People and social sustainability) and environmental protection (Planet).

Intended Audience: This course is especially aimed at high calibre business students hoping to be leaders. Willingness to think critically about how general ethical principles apply in real world issues are necessary for those who want to do well. Ethical vision is about why we do things and seek certain goals with an understanding of what it means to say something is worth aiming at, and principles are about how we are guided to get there. The course?s analytical tools and content are intended to develop our students with these core leadership capabilities.

Value: It will provide a breath of vision and understanding that will stand you in good stead as a basis for thinking your way around the concrete moral challenges of modern business and life.