This course will provide students with an introduction to the ethical issues facing managers in a variety of nonprofit and for-profit settings to equip them with the tools necessary to navigate these challenges and act in an ethically appropriate way. Classical theories of normative ethics -- in particular, the consequentialist approaches of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, the deontological approach of Immanuel Kant, and the virtue ethics approach of Aristotle -- will be critically examined and applied to a number of ethical dilemmas that arise in organizational settings. Students will be presented with practical frameworks for making ethical choices and taught to build ethical decision trees to evaluate the ethical implications of different courses of action. Ethical challenges that will be considered include hiring, firing, sexual harassment, compensation, conflicts of interest, product safety, deceptive advertising, pricing, and whistleblowing. The issue of corporate social responsibility will be explored. We will also consider the descriptive ethical question of why we fail to do what is right and what to do about it.
MGT 547 - Organizational Ethics