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Business Ethics

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228 views3 pages

Business Ethics

darden

Uploaded by

ac han
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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UVA-MOD-0115Y

Rev. Mar. 31, 2016

Business Ethics

Syllabus

Course Description

This is a course in decision making. As such, the ultimate


purpose of this course is to help students become more About Darden Course Syllabi
proficient and more effective at making decisions—something The Darden Graduate School of Business
that could be said of any foundational core course at the Darden Administration is regularly recognized as
School. The particular focus of this course is on how managers having one of the world’s premier
should think about the role of values and ethics in decision teaching faculties within business
making; as business leaders, some of the most challenging education. Darden Business Publishing is
aspects of the decisions one will make in the future are the pleased to provide current Darden course
aspects of those decisions that involve values and morality. As syllabi for verified faculty members.
such, the course is designed to expose students to—and help These syllabi provide instructors with
them gain facility with—a set of ideas and concepts that can help context as to how cases could be used in
students structure their thinking and more fully develop an a particular sequence to achieve the
approach to recognizing and incorporating a consideration of learning outcomes of the teaching teams
ethics into their own decision-making framework. This will at the Darden School. Use the modules
enable students to reason more effectively about the role of in these course syllabi as a reference for
ethics in a complex, dynamic, global business environment, and updating case materials within your
will ultimately further develop their sense of responsible school’s programs.
judgment.

However, as a former Darden first-year student put it some years ago, the “Business Ethics” course differs
from the other core courses in one key way: whereas other foundational courses introduce tools and analytical
frameworks designed to make decision making easier, the ideas and frameworks introduced in this course are
designed to make decision making more difficult. That is, to take ethics and values seriously requires that each
student grapple with nuances and difficulties that may have seemed simple at first glance. Nevertheless, a leader
who more effectively recognizes the ethical aspects of a decision, and wrestles more profoundly with those
issues, is ultimately better prepared to make more effective decisions. Not easier decisions, or simpler ones. But
decisions that are more comprehensive and informed, taking a fuller account of the decision’s downstream
implications and second- and third-order effects. As such, the benefit derived from the course—through
working to develop judgment—will be directly related to how much effort one puts into the course. We
encourage each student to engage in the difficulties of every case discussion rather than work to deflect
controversy or assume the challenging issues away.

This syllabus was prepared by the Business Ethics faculty of the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia.
Copyright  2016 by the University of Virginia Darden School Foundation, Charlottesville, VA. All rights reserved. To order copies, send an e-mail to
[email protected]. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or by
any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the permission of the Darden School Foundation.
Page 2 UVA-MOD-0115Y

Specific course objectives include the following:

1. To recognize ethical issues in business.


2. To apply several important concepts and frameworks for moral reasoning to complex business issues.
3. To appreciate the role of ethics as central in business decision making.
4. To develop an enterprise perspective that includes an ability to formulate, analyze, and defend decisions
in ethical terms.
5. To analyze the ethical issues that arise in other Darden courses.
6. To critically examine one’s personal ethics and test them in conversation with peers.

Ethics is an ongoing conversation about human interrelationships, so ethics is as much a part of


management as finance, accounting, and organizational behavior. Ethics concerns how our actions affect each
other, and it is about the choices that we make for ourselves and for others. During this term, Darden students
have an extraordinary opportunity to discuss the role of ethics in business with 60+ of their peers. The faculty’s
role is to lead and facilitate that discussion. It should be noted that it is easy to generate heat in ethics discussions,
but more difficult to generate light. That is, students might experience a strong emotional reaction to a particular
issue in a class discussion, therefore making it is easy to disagree with one another; what is more difficult is for
students to listen to each other and learn something from the perspective of others that helps each individual
see the decision more clearly. Our focus will be on cases without easy answers. We will try to analyze viable
alternatives in extremely difficult situations, and we will develop reasoning skills to defend these alternatives
from a managerial perspective.

Course Instructors

Darden Teaching Faculty Cases by This Author


Jared Harris Harris cases
Ed Freeman Freeman cases
Bobby Parmar Parmar cases
Andy Wicks Wicks cases

Course Outline

Class Materials Topic

“Corporate Responsibility and Ethics” (UVA-MOD-0115)


1 “Merck & Co., Inc. (A)” (HBS-9-991-021) Corporate strategy
“An Introduction to Ethics: Framing and Key Themes in
Business Ethics” (UVA-E-0340)
2 “ExxonMobil and the Chad/Cameroon Pipeline (A)” (UVA- Stakeholders
E-0262)
“Managing for Stakeholders” (UVA-E-0383)
Page 3 UVA-MOD-0115Y

“The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its


Profits,” by Friedman, M.; The New York Times Magazine,
September 13, 1970.
“Ethics and Leading Organizations” (UVA-MOD-0116)
3 “Marge Norman and MiniScribe Corporation” (UVA-C-2168) What makes people tick?; the
role of authority
“Making Ethics Personal: Character and Your Personal
Vision” (UVA-E-0393)
4 “Marge Norman and MiniScribe Corporation” (UVA-C-2168) (Continued)

“Moral Voice: Talking About Ethics at Work” (UVA-E-0411)

5 “Davis Press and Meccan Madness” (UVA-E-0073) Ethics and organization


“Note on Islam” (UVA-E-0072)
“Introduction to Ethics: The Language of Ethics for
Managers” (UVA-E-0405)
6 “Turning Gears: A Business Ethics Simulation” (UVA-E- Decision making
0350) (Contact Darden Business Publishing for academic
pricing.)
7 “Bad Arguments and Rationalization in Business” (UVA-E- Logical frameworks in
0406) arguments
“The Book of Bad Arguments” (UVA-E-0408)
8 “Caprica Energy and Its Choices” (UVA-QA-0765) Ethics and the environment:
quantifying probabilities and
analyzing uncertainties
9 “Using a Framework to Create Better Choices” (UVA-E-0407) Decision making
“Understanding Personal Values” (UVA-MOD-0117)
10 “Gambling and Death in Vietnam (A)” (UVA-E-0323) Personal loyalty; upholding
justice
“Gambling and Death in Vietnam (B)” (UVA-E-0324)
“The Admissions Dilemma” (UVA-E-0359)
“Inactive Duty” (UVA-E-0358)
11 “E-Cigarettes: The Wild, Wild, West” (UVA-M-0876) Ethics in marketing;
disruptive technologies
“Ethics at the Frontier” (UVA-E-0392)
12 “Danville Airlines” (UVA-E-0265) The role of knowledge
“A Note on Rights” (UVA-E-0188)
“Developing Judgment” (UVA-MOD-0118)
13 “GE Healthcare in India: An (Ultra) Sound Strategy?” (UVA- Emerging issues
E-0337)
14 “Evergreen Enhancement” (UVA-E-0381) The role of technology
Exam

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