Business Ethics

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The Integrative Program, Business Ethics, is an elective IP in the full-time MBA at the AGSM. It is taught by Associate Professor Damian Grace and Professor Robert Marks.

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• 2005 Course Outline here (PDF)
  2005 Course Outline here (HTML)

• Ethical dilemmas:
  • Ethical dilemmas suggested by the 2005 class here
  • Ethical dilemmas suggested by an earlier class here
  • Ethical dilemmas that were faced by readers of a newspaper Dear Mr Ethicist column here

• A list of 14 cases to be answered in teams here

• A glossary of ethical terms here, from U Nebraska.

Lectures and Cases

Day 1: Introduction -- Ethics, Economics, and Business.

• Introductory Lecture -- REM OH || Printable
• The Moral (PDF)
• Monday's lectures (PPT) -- DG

• Basic Ethics -- DG
• The Bayer article
• The 9/11 Report
• A Roundtable at the GSB Stanford with Milton Friedman, 2000 including transcripts and audio.

• Posters:
  • Poster: Suggested ethical dilemmas
  • Poster: Suggested ethical qualities
  • Poster: Kew Gardens principles
  • Poster: Hegel's terms
  • Expanding circle
  • Poster: A hierarchy of actions

Day 2: Ethical issues in corporations.

• Tuesday's lectures (PPT) -- DG

• Poster: Conflict of interest
• Four triggers
• External costs graphs

  Housekeeping: Printable

• Poster: A corporate conscience?

• Cases:
  • Case: Discrimination at Telstra (PDF)
  • Case: BHP Ok Tedi (PDF)
  • Case: The Exxon Valdez (PDF)
  • Case: Ethical marketing? (PDF)
  • Case: Bouncy Baby (PDF)
  • Case: The Industrial Products Company (PDF)

Day 3: International business & ethical relativism

• Wednesday's lectures (PPT) -- DG

• Notes on Corporate Government
• Corporate Collapse
• ASX Corporate Government notes
• Alan Greenspan on Corporate Governance
• Corporate Governance International

• Transparency International's Corruption Surveys
  • TI corruption index 2000
  • TI corruption index 2004
  • TI bribe-payers index 2002

Day 4: Corporate Governance, Enron, and The Economists' Views

• Thursday's lectures (PPT) -- DG
• Thursday's lectures (PDF) -- REM OH || Printable

• Cases:
  • Case: Lockheed (PDF)
  • Case: SEA Inc. (PDF)
  • Case: The Kader fire (PDF)

• Notes on Confucian ethics OH || Printable
  • The ethics of Confucius, a summary
  • The Hundred Schools of Thought, including Kong Zi (Confucius).
  • A further discussion of Confucius' ideas

• Notes on ethics from the Indian tradition:
  • business ethics here, and
  • Hindu ethics here, and
  • Ahimsa in business here.

Day 5: Implementation -- Structuring ethics in organisations

• Friday's lectures (PPT) -- DG
• Ethics quiz (PDF)

• Case: Whistleblowing (PDF)
• TIME Magazine's Persons of the Year 2002:
  the Enron, Worldcom, and FBI whistleblowers (HTML): and Here; Sherron Watkins; Sherron again; the three interviewed; Sherron Watkins' thoughts on Ken Lay's guilty verdict, 2006.

2005 Team Presentations:

1. British Money in Asian Pulp & Paper (PPT)
2. Oil Concessions in Angola (PPT)
3. Redundancy in a Cold Climate (PPT)
4. Monitoring Financial and Social Conduct (PPT)
5. Supply Chain Management -- GM and Nike (PPT)
6. Philip Morris (PPT)
7. Fair Trade (PPT)
8. A CEO -- a Chief Ethics Officer? (PPT)

More Cases:

• Case: Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility (PDF)
• Case: A Hippocratic Oath for Business? (PDF)

Writing aids (look at these for your essay):

• Issues / Actors / Processes (PDF)
• Writing Well (PDF)
• Rules to Write Good

Enron links:

• Link to a trailer of the new movie, Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room
• Link to the movie's web site
• A timeline of Enron's fall
• Graphics on Enron
• Link to the Enron tapes. See the transcript of or listen to SNO-224 for the (profane) smoking gun.
• An interview with Alex Gibney, the movie's director.

Other Links:

• Link to the Jackson Report on James Hardie and its foundation. (Report of the Special Commission of Inquiry Into the Medical Research and Compensation Foundation)
• Other movie trailers:
  • Liar, Liar
  • The Contender
  • Bowling for Columbine
  • Barbarians at the Gate
  • The Insider
  • The Bank

• Links to other Business Ethics sites

Photos of the 2002 Ethics Laboratory in session (and more):

• Damian lectures
• Bob & Damian
• Hamish M., Mark, Robin, Peter, Harold
• Phillip, Robin, Hamish F., Soula, Steven, Thomas, Alan
• Damian lectures
• Bob & Damian

Doing well by doing good: A poem.

Humour:

• The CEOnistas
• Personal Ethical Assistants
• Osama bin Laden, CPA

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Last Updated 9 September, 2005

Robert Marks, bobm@agsm.edu.au