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International business ethics

Convenor: Dr Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick
Lecturers: Dr Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick, Dr. Sue Konzelmann, Mr. Nigel Laurie
Assessment: Assessment will be based on participation in one in-class exercise (20%), one group presentation (20%), and one piece of coursework on a topic related to the presentation (60%). The coursework deadline is 7th June 2012 (Absolute Cut-Off deadline – 28th June 2012). There will be no written examination.

Please note – this module runs in the summer term and teaching will take place on a Tuesday and Thursday evening over a five week period

Aims

The aims of this module are to give students a critical understanding of the principal theories of philosophical ethics; the origins of moral values and the ways in which these may vary between cultures; the application of moral reasoning to the ethical problems facing businesses and the individuals employed by them; the international setting of ethical problems in business and the regulation of the activities of international business; and the relation between norms, regulations and the views of different stakeholders in the application of ethics to international business.

Learning objectives

By the end of this module, students will be able:

  • to understand different philosophical conceptions of morality and ethics, and how they may be rooted in different cultures and socio-economic systems;
  • to comprehend the ethics of the individual in a business setting and the interaction between individual and societal factors in shaping ethics in different societies; and
  • to identify the ethical questions facing international business, the points of view of different stakeholders, and appropriate resolutions to ethical problems in specific cases.

Main Text and Background Reading

There is no single set text for the course as a whole. Instead, we rely on a variety of readings from books and journals, and sometimes other sources, which will be available for download from Blackboard. For background reading, students are advised to consult the following:

  • Aristotle (1954) The Nicomachean Ethics, Oxford: OUP.
  • Frederick, R E (2002) A Companion to Business Ethics, Oxford: Blackwell.
  • MacIntyre, A (1998) A Short History of Ethics, London: Routledge.
  • Mill, J S (1998 ) Utilitarianism, Oxford: OUP.
  • Sandel M (2009) Justice, London: Allen Lane.