Business Ethics, Communication, and Leadership
Over the years, the USC Marshall School of Business has steadily increased its emphasis on the ethical practice of business and the professions. In fact, it is difficult now to find a single course in the entire
Marshall curriculum that does not spend considerable time addressing the ethical implications of its subject matter, whether it is finance and business economics, marketing, management and organization, entrepreneurship, or any of the academic disciplines within the School.
To a great degree, the domestic and international business climate has driven this. We find instances of unethical—even illegal—business and professional practices at too many turns in the world of business and the professions. Major felonies and public scandals involving business dominate the news headlines; the more minor—but more common—infractions typically escape our attention unless we work in the settings where these surface or know well someone who does.
As faculty at Marshall, an essential goal of ours is to help you establish the ethical standards and practices that not only will keep you out of media coverage prominently displayed in handcuffs, but which will also help you to practice business in a manner of which you, your family, and your friends will be proud. In short, we want to instruct you in ways that will permit you to sleep soundly at night, knowing that you did well at the same time that you did good. This is one significant definition of corporate social responsibility, and it is our task to explore it fully in this course.
Goals and Objectives for BUCO 425 Ethics and Professional Communication
Over the semester we will
• study the sometimes uneasy relationship between ethics, business, and economics;
• explore how capitalism has been practiced, especially in the West, along with its critique;
• investigate the interactions between employers, managers, proprietors, employees, the community, the media—in short, all of the stakeholders—in the workplace; and
• examine the ethical ties between business and professional responsibilities.
Required Texts
Shaw, William H. Business Ethics , 7 th
ed.
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Your Responsibilities
As a student in this course, you will
1) complete all reading and oral and written assignments in timely fashion. (In terms of reading, it averages about forty pages per week.)
2) participate in all in-class activities, such as discussions and exercises.
3) undertake the midterms and final examinations at the scheduled times.
4) contribute to a small-team group project based on a business ethics topic that I will assign.
5) lead a discussion of a case study from our text and diligently produce your portion of the group project as part of a small team.
Grading Weights
Two Midterm Examinations each 20 %;
(These exams will not be cumulative but rather will serve to divide together 40 % of course grade the term into three parts.)
Final Examination 20%
(In effect, this will be the third of three midterms in that it will cover the material raised in the last third of the text and class.)
Group Project
(I will assign a theme for research, writing, and presentation by students in the context of a small group. More information about this will be available as the term progresses.)
Individual Case Study
(Each student will take the class through one of the many case studies that Shaw provides in the text, selecting one of his or her choice.)
Professionalism
20%
10%
10%
(This encompasses preparation, discussion, participation, and
conscientious engagement with the class as a whole.)
Evaluation of your Work
Total 100%
I promise to do my best to give you lucid exams and assignments with explicitly stated expectations and then to evaluate your work as fairly and objectively as possible. (E.g., I’m not interested in your agreeing with me in terms of the positions that you take in the work for our class. If I do my job correctly, you may not even know what my position is.) Further, I’ll earnestly try to return your exams and other work to you within ten days of your submitting them to me. If, however, upon receipt of them, you believe that I have made an error in grading your work, you may within one week of the return of the graded assignment
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request that I re-evaluate it. In order to do so, write a brief memo to me in which you lay out the reasons why you think that you deserve a different grade and what that grade should be . I will consider such requests carefully and deliberately and then relay my decision to you.
Availability to Meet with You
I take seriously my responsibility to be available to assist you in mastering all of our course content and successfully completing our assignments and exams. Hence I will do my best to make myself present for you. I have scheduled an official office hour each week on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but you will often find me in my office even outside of those announced hours. In addition, we can schedule mutually agreeable times to meet.
Further, I’ll do my best to return your emails or phone calls within one business day you contact me.
Professionalism and Protocols in Class
Attendance and punctuality are required in our class , in part because the course is intended to function as an interactive seminar. Establishing this atmosphere in class requires that each of us regularly be present, and it also insures that our time together will become an interesting exchange of ideas and viewpoints.
Please observe due dates for exams and projects . Exams will occur and projects and case studies will be due on the dates stipulated in the Calendar below. (See pp. 6-8. These dates are tentative; circumstances may cause them to change. If that were to happen, I would notify you about new dates as quickly as possible.) Generally and without a documented excuse that entails illness, participation in a universitysponsored event, transportation difficulties, or a family emergency, you will not have the opportunity to make up missed exams, case studies, or projects. Any other policy would be unfair to those students who sacrifice in order to meet due dates.
Pay attention to your demeanor in class . More is expected of you than merely being physically present and on time. Please turn off your wireless phone, iPod, iPad, Blackberry, Android, or any other electronic device that beeps or plays music, and do not use class time to catch up on text-messaging, the DT , WSJ , or any other reading that we are not discussing that particular day.
Actively engage in the class. You need not agree with me in our discussions or with the opinions of your colleagues. Indeed, I am going to encourage a genteel disagreement whenever it occurs. Still, never disparage the beliefs, dignity, or self-respect of those whom you feel to be wrong. Concerning the issues that we will be covering, all of the angels definitely are not on one side and all of the devils on the other.
These are themes about which reasonable people of good will may disagree, and I expect all of us to acknowledge this and so be civil in our disagreement.
If you do your best to enter into discussion in this fashion, you will positively contribute to lively and engaging class meetings. Both your classmates and I will be grateful for your doing so.
Academic Integrity and Plagiarism
You probably know that few academic sins are worse than that of cheating on an exam or engaging in plagiarism. (The latter has resulted in great academic controversy in recent years in charges leveled against eminent historians such as Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin as well as other scholars. No matter the quality of one’s written work, a substantiated charge of plagiarism casts a shadow over it from which it is very difficult—if not impossible—to recover.)
The university mandates severe consequences for plagiarism as well as for cheating on exams. I will not knowingly tolerate any instance of either and will act appropriately when I discover them. Please consult
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the prohibition of plagiarism and dishonest external assistance on exams that are outlined on pp. 140 ff. of
SCampus 12/13 in section 11.00, “Behavior Violating University Standards and Appropriate Sanctions,” particularly 11.11, 11.12, and 11.13
.
In addition, pay close attention to the “Conduct Review System” and
“Academic Integrity and Review Process,” sections 12.00 and 14.00, which follow on pp. 144-147 and 148.
Cases of alleged plagiarism and external assistance during exams usually end up being adjudicated by the
Office of Student Judicial Affairs and Community Standards, and the penalties to which a plagiarist or exam-cheater may be subjected are well worth avoiding.
A closely related trap to sidestep in the writing of papers or other projects is that of illegitimate assistance or collaboration. Whereas plagiarism typically entails acquiring a printed or online text and passing it off as one’s own creation, illegitimate assistance often involves persuading or hiring another writer to construct a paper that can similarly be submitted as one’ own. It may also consist of another author willingly—even voluntarily—drafting a text for one that one then claims to be one’s own writing.
General suggestions and recommendations that writers give to and receive from one another do not violate the academic prohibition on illegitimate assistance/collaboration. What does constitute this infraction is the creation of a text by a writer for another who, as recipient, cannot then truthfully and objectively claim that text to be his or her own.
If you have any questions at all about precisely what constitutes plagiarism or illegitimate assistance/collaboration, please see me so that you may avoid them at all costs.
Retention of Graded Work
I will keep returned-but-unclaimed midterms and group-project papers for one succeeding academic term after the conclusion of the fall semester. While you may claim these at any point during the spring 2013 term, I encourage you to do so at your earliest convenience.
BUCO 425 Add/Drop Process
In compliance with USC’s and Marshall’s policies, all courses are open-enrollment (R-clearance) through the first week of class. At the end of the first week, all courses become closed (D-clearance). After the first week, then, any opportunity to join our section will hinge on the availability of a place within the capped enrollment of twenty-eight students and my permission. Please note, too, that any student who does not attend the first two meetings of our class may be dropped.
Students with Disabilities
Any student requesting academic accommodations based on a disability is required to register with
Disability Services and Programs (DSP) each semester. A letter of verification for approved accommodations can be obtained from DSP; once you have it, please deliver it to me as early as possible in the semester. You can reach DSP in STU 301 and by phone at (213) 740-0776. The office is open 8:30 a.m.-5:00 p.m., Monday-Friday.
Emergency Prepared ness/Course Continuity
In case of an emergency that would make travel to campus difficult for everyone, university leadership will announce an electronic way for instructors to teach students in their residence halls, apartment, or homes using a combination of Blackboard, teleconferencing, and other appropriate technologies.
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A Personal Note
I welcome you to BUCO 425 and look forward to the semester before us. The issues that we will be addressing are significant ones for the practice of business and the professions, and I anticipate an energetic exploration of them. If you need my counsel or feel that you would benefit from speaking with me, please do not hesitate to contact me. Successfully fulfilling the responsibilities of this class is something that we will take on together.
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1 August 28 August 30
Introduction to the class, syllabus, and text; exploration of ethical issues in business and the professions; discussion of ethics handouts.
Ethics handouts on Aristotelian virtue theory , Benthamian/Millean utilitarianism , and Kantian deontology (to be distributed in class)
2 September 4 September 6
To think in ethical fashion: Ethical reasoning and the classical ethical theories in more depth.
Shaw, Chapters 1-2, pp. 3-88*
3 September 11 September 13
Ethical theory of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and its application to business and the professions today on Tuesday, September 11; meet in BRI ELC for ethics exercise on Thursday, September 13.
Chapter 3, pp. 89-125
4 September 18 September 20
Unfettered free enterprise as imagined by Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations ; its implications for practicing business and the professions today; the Marxist critique of capitalism.
Chapter 4, pp. 129-165
5 September 25 September 27
Corporations, shareholders, and the collective pursuit of wealth—Is Reinhold Niebuhr right in that individuals may be moral but organizations necessarily are evil? Can this thesis be proven?
Chapter 5, pp. 167-206
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6 October 2 October 4
Review for Midterm 1 on Tuesday, 10/2; take Midterm 1 on Thursday, October 4 .
7 October 9 October 11
What, if anything, do businesses and the professions owe their customers, clients, and consumers in general? Is advertising too influential and dangerous within its presently-allowed parameters, especially for children? Introduction to the group project, teams, and time to work within teams.
Chapter 6, pp. 209-258
8 October 16 October 18
What, if anything, do businesses and the professions owe the environment? (Is there any company that doesn’t proclaim itself to be adamantly green? Are these claims generally true? Why might this be?)
Chapter 7, pp. 259-297
9 October 23 October 25
Ethical protocols of the workplace, including salaries, employment at will, discipline, and union organizing. Would managers and white-collar employees benefit from union membership? Continued work within project teams.
Chapter 8, pp. 301-342
10 October 30 November 1
The right to privacy in the workplace, the need for informed consent, and the right to safety on the job on
Tuesday, October 30. (How might the rights of management and those of employees conflict?) Meet in
BRI ELC on Thursday, November 1, for a second ethics exercise.
Chapter 9, pp. 343-382
11 November 6 November 8
Review for Midterm 2 on Tuesday, November 6; take Midterm 2 on Thursday, November 8; return to
Pacific Standard Time on Sunday, November 4.
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12 November 13 November 15
Moral choices facing employees and corporations in the practice of business and the professions today.
How do the rights but also the responsibilities of both management and employees compare?
Chapter 10, pp. 383-420
13 November 20 November 22
Hostility and tension in the workplace: Discrimination, sexual harassment, and affirmative action;
November 22 is Thanksgiving Day—no class.
Chapter 11, pp. 421-454
14 November 27 November 29
Screening of J.C. Chandor’s Margin Call and discussion of its themes and applications.
15 December 4 December 6
Group presentations on Tuesday, December 4 ; review for the Final Exam on Thursday, December 6.
Final Exam is Tuesday, December 18, 8:00 a.m.-10:00 a.m. in our normal classroom, HOH 306.
*Please note that all reading is assigned for the week and dates under which it appears and is to be accomplished for Tuesday of that week.
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