APPLIES TO ACADEMIC YEAR 2014/2015

ELE 3710 Business and Professional Ethics

Responsible for the course
Johannes Brinkmann

Department
Department of Strategy and Logistics

Term
According to study plan

ECTS Credits
7,5

Language of instruction
English

Introduction
Business and professional ethics as an academic field has two main functions. On the one hand, ethics is potentially helpful when it comes to analyzing, handling and not least preventing moral conflict cases in business contexts. On the other hand, business ethics invites a critical look at business professional roles and at business practices. The course emphasizes work on cases and reflects that the subject business and professional ethics is (should be) a field of listening, reflection and discussion (rather than a preaching discipline).
Read perhaps as a first step-by-step presentation: "Ethics" most often refers to a domain of inquiry, a discipline, in which matters of right and wrong, good and evil, virtue and vice, are systematically examined. "Morality", by contrast, is most often used to refer not to a discipline but to patterns of thought and action that are actually operative in everyday life. In this sense, morality is what the discipline of ethics is about. And so business morality is what business ethics is about" (source: K. E. Goodpaster).
Or watch perhaps a popular presentation of what the field is about such as the one by St Gallen university: –http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0NkGtNU_9w

Learning outcome
Acquired knowledge
After completing the course, students should:

• know the most important terminology, theories and authors' names within normative and descriptive ethical theory
• understand the strengths and weaknesses of chosen approaches

• be able to apply concepts and theories fruitfully and critically to business ethical and professional ethical problems in the literature as well as in real business and business school life
• be able to draft and organize work with real moral conflict situations and business contexts
• be able to identify ethical aspects in other business school subjects
• be able to ask critical questions about such theories and about business practices

• Ethics means reflection about complexity, dilemmas, questions of right and wrong, in this case in business and professional contexts
• After completing the course, students should have acquired a reflected attitude when it comes to their own morality, i.e. have developed personal ethics and a sense of social responsibility as a business school graduate and have acquired an ability and a willingness to follow up words with deeds, never forgetting that business ethics is about the wise and responsible balancing of business and non-business considerations

• Why moral conflict cases are ubiquitous
• Cases sorted by fields, with debriefing and discussion: human resource management ethics, marketing and PR ethics, professional ethics, environmental ethics, cross-cultural business ethics
• Business and professional ethics – additional topics and approaches
• Business ethics as a research and a teaching discipline
• Different approaches to moral philosophy. With a focus on discourse ethics and a socratic dialogue in the Nelson-Heckmann tradition, see about the latter perhaps http://www.sfcp.org.uk/socratic-dialogue-2/
• Summarizing and transcending the case-focus: business ethics as professional ethics