MGMT 2130: Business Ethics & Social Responsibility Fall Semester 2021 Department of Management | School of Business and Management The Hong Kong University of Science & Technology Office: Phone: Email: Office hours: Class Meetings Prof. Joseph Koc Adjunct Associate Professor N/A 9771 9550 josephkoc@ust.hk (by appointment) L3 L4 Fri Fri Mr. Peter Yip Instructional Assistant LSK5018 2358 7892 peteryip@ust.hk 1000 – 1150 1300 – 1450 LSK1007 LSK1007 COURSE OBJECTIVE The late Potter Stewart, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court rightfully once said, “Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do” Being the future leaders, you will all be making important decisions. Decisions that shape the environment in which we will endure for decades to come; decisions that define how mankind interact with one another; decisions that affect lives with which we are directly and indirectly in contact; decisions that touches communities and families that we are connected or not connected with. In short, decisions that matter. Above all, decisions that determine the future of, well, the many future generations to come. The world and ecosystems we live and operate in are becoming more complicated and inter-connected. As you progress, you will find in your possession more power and authority. To complicate matters further, technology advancement that made what previously impossible, possible. These bring us into territories with no precedence, thus lack of references to decision making. Objective of this course is to provide a platform for you to look into occasions where important decisions have to be made by all of you eventually. Whatever occasion it turns out to be, you will need to be ready to exercise your judgement to arrive at decisions that will cause impacts that will last beyond you. Judgements that are based on your bottom-line. The world, as you will get to know, is not exactly made up of black and white but rather, shades of grey. This course is about helping you navigate through the shades and arrive at decisions that you will not live to regret. COURSE STRUCTURE You will be led through 3 sections of ethics and sustainability related topics, a total of 8 classroom sessions, two consultation sessions and one presentation session. First section, Fundamentals of Ethics, Stakeholders and You. We will start with the basics and fundamental and above all, YOU. In particular, YOU as the key element of this course and how and why you matter : Course Introduction - Purpose And Us Ethnics And Moral Social Responsibility - Stakeholder Theory + CSV Second section, Practicing Ethics, is made up of 3 classroom sessions. We will examine 3 areas that you will frequently come across scenarios where your decisions will create significant impacts: Ethics - Our Responsibility To Employees Ethics - Our Responsibility To Customer Ethics - Innovations And Entrepreneurship Last but not least in the final section of Sustainability, we will take a look at what you can practice from a personal and business perspective that will determine how the future, your future and that of future generations to be exact, shall be like: Sustainability - Circular Economy Sustainability - Knowledge Management Duration of each classroom session is one hour fifty minutes. For consultation sessions, meetings will be held during class time to discuss matters related to the course and assignments. One pull-out session will be held on September 17th, 2021 Friday evening 1800 – 2000 hrs where you will be joined by students enrolled in the other class. Speakers from HKUST, representatives from an environmental technology start-up company and Cyberport have been invited to come to campus to share their expert views and experience on the topic of a sustainable campus at this special session. ABOUT INSTRUCTOR https://www.linkedin.com/in/joseph-koc-aa48332/ COURSE MATERIALS There will not be required textbook. All course material will be distributed online through CANVAS COURSE EVALUATION You will be evaluated on the basis of how you apply your learning to the analyzing and solving of challenges that impact lives and communities, via one write-up and a group project You will form teams with others in this class. Activities, discussions and projects will be conducted based on team formation. Commentary Write-up (30%) This write-up is about your thoughts and opinions of the stakeholders on which your decisions will have an impact. You will come to realize that resources are scarce. We all need to set priorities on how these resources should and will be allocated. You and your team member will prepare a write-up on what you see as the top 3 most important groups of stakeholders that you will prioritize resources allocation to ensure positive impact is created (at the least, minimize negative impact). You will be evaluated based on your ability to elaborate and justify choices of your picks versus the other skills that you have studied. Your commentary should be made up of 3 bullet points, each supported by no more than 500 words justification / elaboration. Your write-up is to be submitted on or before 11:59am 5th November 2021. Course Project – Analysing To Advise A Environmental-tech Start-up (45%) All start-up founders are of the opinion that their solutions are unique. That they have identified pain points of importance. Pain points that there are important enough that people would care. And above all, they have just the right solution for the pain points. But do they really? Your Course Project give you the chance to validate and recommend strategies to an environmental-tech start-up company (“case company”). Working as project groups, you will examine and study solution offering and strategies adopted by the case company from the Hong Kong Cyberport Management Company Limited (“Cyberport”). You will develop a report with no more than 1,000 words, presenting your recommendations to the case company regarding how their solutions can be applied to contribute to the ongoing development and fostering of a sustainable university campus as HKUST. Your report should include any recommendations to the founder you see as critical to ensure successful implementation of the various strategies, including but not limited to what and why it the solution matters to HKUST sustainable campus mission; where and how the solutions can be implemented; how HKUST can make use of the outcome to support its sustainable campus initiative organisation. Submission deadline is 26th November, 2021. Similar to the other assignment, submission is to be made via CANVAS by 11:59am. On the last class session, you will present to the representative of ESGM, representative from Cyberport and user representative from HKUST for 5-minute on your findings and recommendations. Your presentation deck should not be more than 10 pages. You will be evaluated based on the following: Recommendation Summary Clarity of argument Analytics Recommendations Structure of Report 10% 10% 10% 5% Recommendation Deck Structure of Presentation 5% Feasibility of your recommendations 5% TOTAL 45% You will meet with representative of the start-up company during one of the earlier classes. One project consultation session will be held to allow progress check as well as for you to clarify understandings. Late pieces of work will receive a penalty of up to 10 percentage points per 24-hour period. For clarity, a piece of work that would have been graded as a 100% but was submitted two days late would receive a grade of 80%. Meaningful in-class participation and contribution is naturally expected. Your participation will also be evaluated by your own team members as reflection of your contribution to your own group. I. II. Knowledge-based 1. Write-up commentary 2. Group project – Supporting the development of a sustainable campus Subtotal 30.0% 45.0% 75.0% In-class engagement 3. Attendance, participation, involvement 4. Peer Evaluation Subtotal 10.0% 15.0% 25.0% Total 100.0% COURSE SCHEDULE Week 1 2 3 4 Lecture L1 L2 L3 L4 Date 3 Sept 10th Sept 17th Sept 24th Sept 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 L5 L6 L7 L8 L9 L10 L11 L12 8th Oct 15th Oct 22nd Oct 29th Oct 5th Nov 12th Nov 19th Nov 26th Nov rd Topic Course Introduction - Purpose And Us Ethnics And Moral Pull-out class session – Guest Speaker Session (1800 – 2000 hrs) Social Responsibility - Stakeholder Theory + CSV No Class On 1st October, 2021 Ethics - Our Responsibility To Employees Consultation Session – Meeting With The Case Company Ethics - Our Responsibility To Customer Ethics - Innovations And Entrepreneurship Project Consultation Session Sustainability - Circular Economy Sustainability - Knowledge Management Recommendation feedback to case company
