- Module 1: Why does business need ethics?
- Case: The Ford Pinto
- The Ford Pinto and the Dominant View
- Reading: Friedman – The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits
- Understanding Friedman’s thesis
- Friedman’s Justification for Stockholder Theory
- Reading: Freeman – Managing for Stakeholders
- Freeman’s Stakeholder Theory
- Separation and Integration
- Returning to the Pinto Case
- Module 2: What is Ethics?
- Why care about ethics?
- Moral vocabulary
- What makes things right or wrong?
- What can be a source of morality?
- Morality from culture
- Morality from religion
- Morality from feelings
- Morality from pain and pleasure
- Morality from interests
- Morality from rationality
- Morality from rights
- Morality from relationships
- Morality from character
- Which theory is the best one?
- Case: Jim and the Indians
- Module 3: Social Responsibility, Professionalism, and Loyalty
- Social Responsibility: The story so far.
- Corporate Social Responsibility and the Triple Bottom Line
- Leaving Friedman Behind?
- Professional Responsibility
- Whistle Blowing
- Case: SS Challenger
- Reading: Davis – Some Paradoxes of Whistle-Blowing
- Reading: Duska – Whistle Blowing and Employee Loyalty
- Whistle-blower: Hero v. Traitor
- Module 4: Business and the Environment
- Externalities and the environment
- Our relationship to the environment
- Morality, Money, and Motor Cars
- Reading: Arnold & Bustos – Business Ethics and Global Climate Change
- Reading: Desjardins – Sustainability: Business’s New Environmental Obligation
- Case: Exporting Pollution to Brazil
- Case: Indian “suicide zone”
- Sustainability as social responsibility
- Module 5: Treatment of Employees
- Externalities and Costs
- Reading: Maitland – The Great Non-Debate over International Sweatshops
- Reading: Arnold and Bowie – Sweatshops and Respect for Persons
- Wages and Coercion
- Terrible Working Conditions and the Costs of Improvement
- Case: Pepsi in Burma
- Case: Levi Strauss & Co. in China
- Balancing Priorities
- Module 6: Privacy, Property, and Technology
- Two Questions about Privacy
- Reading: Johnson – Privacy
- Why do we Value Privacy?
- Shi Tao, Yahoo, and China
- Thinking about the Shi Tao Case
- Property and Intellectual Property
- Reading: DeGeorge – Intellectual Property and Pharmaceutical Drugs
- Case: Patents and the African AIDS Epidemic
- Case: Merck and River Blindness
- Conflicting Rights and Ethical Intuitions
- Module 7: Advertising
- The purpose and kinds of advertising
- Branding advertisements
- Transactional advertisements
- Reading: Arrington – Advertising and Behavior Control
- Reading: Brenkert – Marketing and the Vulnerable
- The morality of persuasion
- Case: Kraft foods Inc.: The Cost of Advertising on Children’s Waistlines
- End of module 7, end of course