Business Ethics
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  • Business Ethics
  • 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

Reading: Desjardins – Sustainability: Business’s New Environmental Obligation

So how do corporations meet their moral obligations to the environment? What exactly must they do? Joseph Desjardins has an answer, which he explains in his article, “Sustainability: Business’s New Environmental Obligation”.

Download text: Desjardins – “Sustainability: Business’s New Environmental Obligation”

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© Michael Matteson and Chris Metivier 2022