Business Ethics

Catalog description

This is a course about ethical decision-making in business organizations. It has two principal components. The first is an introduction to ethical reasoning generally, the Western tradition of moral philosophy, and ethical issues that arise specifically inconnection with business and technology. The second half of the course takes a psychological perspective on individual and organizational wrongdoing, seeking to understand why good people sometimes do bad things. The emphasis throughout the course is on identifying ethical issues and anticipating the pitfalls that can lead to disasters such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the Volkswagen emissions testing scandal, the General Motors ignition switch failure, and the pattern of wrongdoing at Wells Fargo.