Creating a Course in Global Business Ethics: A Modest Proposal

• Published date: 01 July 2011
• Date: 01 July 2011
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-1722.2011.01090.x
• Author: Lucien J. Dhooge

Creating a Course in Global Business

Ethics: A Modest Proposal

Lucien J. Dhooge

n

I. INTRODUCTION

The College of Management at the Georgia Institute of Technology has

placed more emphasis on the topic of business ethics in the past few years.

Business ethics has always been a required component of the legal envi-

ronment of business course whether taught at the undergraduate or grad-

uate levels. More recently, the college has introduced an undergraduate

course devoted exclusively to business ethics, although regrettably this

course remains an elective rather than a required part of the curriculum.

In the past two years, the college has also endorsed new ethics courses with

technology and global emphases. These courses are the undergraduate

progeny of well-established ethics courses in the college’s management of

technology and global business programs.

The topic of global business ethics is addressed in many different

contexts at the College of Management. At the undergraduate level, the

topic is covered in a full f‌ifteen-week course for three credit units. This

course is taught in a seminar fashion, given the smaller size of enrollment

compared to the required legal and ethical environment of business

course. The course has a longer pedigree in the college’s executive edu-

cation program.

1

However, unlike the undergraduate course, the execu-

tive education version is taught in four sessions spanning fourteen hours

and is delivered in one week. Furthermore, although the course is taught

r2011 The Author

Journal of Legal Studies Education r2011 Academy of Legal Studies in Business

207

Journal of Legal Studies Education

Volume 28, Issue 2, 207–248, Summer/Fall 2011

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Sue and John Staton Professor of Law, College of Management, Georgia Institute of Tech-

nology.

1

The course has been a required component of the global executive education program for six

years. By comparison, the course has been offered at the undergraduatelevel on one occasion.

in a similar seminar and discussion format, the discussions are at a much

higher level, given the age and experience level of executive education

students. Another signif‌icant difference is the number of students. The

executive education version of the course is four to f‌ive times the size of the

undergraduate version of the course.

Regardless of the audience, format and class size, the under-

graduate and executive education versions of the course share some

similarities. Both courses focus on enhancing student awareness of

ethical considerations in the international marketplace. Both courses

emphasize the identif‌ication of parties affected by business decisions, the

recognition of ethical issues, and the application of multiple theories

of ethical analysis to such issues. Both courses also must provide basic

knowledge with respect to business ethics. There are no prerequisites to

the course at the undergraduate level, although most students have

completed the required legal environment of business course, which

includes a one-week overview of ethical considerations. These students

possess some classroom knowledge of ethics but little if any practical busi-

ness application of such concepts. By contrast, most students enrolled in

the executive education version of the course have not completed a course

in business ethics but possess considerable workplace experience with

ethical dilemmas.

This article discusses several aspects of creating a course in global

business ethics. Part II presents the rationale for the course. Part III

discusses the selection of course materials and pedagogical approaches.

Part IV focuses on the course content and materials. This part describes

each reading and case study, how each of these readings and studies

advance the course objectives, and questions presented by these materials

that may form the basis for class discussion.

II. RATIONALE FOR THE COURSE

There were three primary rationales for the creation of the global business

ethics course.

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These rationales are brief‌ly described below.

2

These rationales are pedagogical in nature and separate and distinct from satisfying elective

requirements in the undergraduate degree program or successfully completing a required

course in the executive education program.

208 Vol. 28 / The Journal of Legal Studies Education

A. Ethics Is Relevant to International Business

Many students regardless of their level of experience view ethics from a

philosophical point of view. Despite its ancient origins and traditional place

in a liberal arts curriculum, ethics is not a purely philosophical topic. Nor is

it a static topic. Every generation of business leaders faces its own ethical

dilemmas. Many ethical issues remain the same, albeit with a modern spin.

For example, ethical inquiries in the area of workplace safety span issues

arising from unsafe factories at the dawn of the Industrial Age to sweat-

shops and exposure to harmful chemicals today. Ethical inquiries with

respect to fraud include practices in the 1920s that ultimately contributed

to the onset of the Great Depression and creation of the Securities and

Exchange Commission, insider trading in the 1980s as vividly depicted in

Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, failures associated with misleading accounting

practices and outright theft such as occurred at Enron, Tyco, WorldCom,

and a host of other companies that led to the adoption of the disclosure

requirements set forth in Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and the factors that con-

tributed to the f‌inancial meltdown in 2008. Another example is issues

arising from doing business with morally reprehensible regimes starting

with apartheid South Africa in 1948 to the Soviet Union after the invasion

of Afghanistan, Iran after the Islamic revolution in 1979, China after the

Tiananmen Square incident in 1989, Burma after its imprisonment of

Nobel laureate Ang San Suu Kyi, and Sudan as a result of its complicity in

the genocide in Darfur. Other ethical issues are relatively new or existing

issues with a new dimension. Examples include theft through f‌ile sharing

and electronic piracy and employee privacy concerns.

Ethical considerations take on an even greater importance in inter-

national business. Students are most likely familiar with distinctions be-

tween right and wrong behavior in a domestic context and may even be

familiar with ethical theories utilized to make such determinations. It is

quite likely, however, that they lack knowledge of such distinctions in other

cultures and countries or how such distinctions are reached. As succinctly

noted by Thomas Donaldson, moral clarity often blurs upon the crossing

of an international boundary.

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The lack of shared attitudes and familiar

laws makes certainty elusive and requires ‘‘[e]ven the best-informed, best-

intentioned executives . . . [to] rethink their assumptions about business

3

Thomas Donaldson, Values in Tension: Ethics Away from Home, in THOMAS DONALDSON ET AL.,

ETHICAL ISSUES IN BUSINESS:APHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH 471 (7th ed. 2002).

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