ETHICS AND SUSTAINABILITY

Ethics is a crucial component of individual and group behavior and is at the heart of organizational responsibilities.

This course considers the ethical responsibilities of managers and corporations. We consider individual and organizational business actions and decisions in light of moral principles and values. We will raise ethical challenges and provide frameworks as groundwork for common patterns of success and failure in managing ethics and corporate responsibility. We address these questions at multiple levels of individual, organization, society and international space and in multicultural contexts.

The growing notion of sustainability raises the question of organizations’ ethical and societal responsibilities that go beyond their economic responsibilities. Organizations are increasingly required to expand their understandings of their role in society to include other stakeholders such as employees, customers, suppliers, local communities, governments and international organizations. We address the complex environments of multinational corporations and emerging governance structures, management systems and innovative business models that can help align the firms’ interests more closely to societal expectations.

At the end of the class the students will:

• Understand the core processes that undergird ethical management in organizations
• Know some levers for sustainable value creation.

1. Introduction to ethics
2. Understanding ethical violations: Why do smart people do dumb things?
3. Obedience to authority (Milgram Experiments)
4. Corporate social responsibility and global supply chains
5. Innovative and inclusive Business Models
6. Innovative and green Business Models.