Class schedule and topics
Week 1: Introduction to business ethics
Part I. Introductory cases
Week 2: Tuesday: Ben & Jerry’s
Thursday: Financial crisis
Week 3: Tuesday: GlaxoSmithKline and AIDS
Thursday: Fracking and deepwater drilling
Part II. Contemporary debates
Week 4: Free markets
Tuesday: Freedom, welfare, and failures
Thursday: Walmart
Week 5: Social responsibilities
Tuesday: Concepts of social responsibility
Thursday: Starbucks and Apple
Week 6: Government
Tuesday: Freedom and fairness
Thursday: Healthcare reform
Week 7: Review and preparation of mid-term assignment
Part III. Stakeholders
Week 8: Consumers
Tuesday: Advertising
Thursday: Ethical consumption + Fast food
Week 9: Workers
Tuesday: Pay
Thursday: Automation + Working in the U.S.
Week 10: Investors
Tuesday: Shareholder priority
Thursday: Financial markets + Financial regulation
Part IV. Challenges
Week 11: Internet
Tuesday: Attention and privacy
Thursday: Digital currencies + News
Week 12: Environment
Tuesday: Sustainability
Thursday: Policy solutions + Green business
Week 13: International business
Tuesday: Trade and multinationals
Thursday: Corruption + Tourism
Week 14: Review for final examination
Basic bibliography
Below is a selection of the basic readings and other materials that you will be expected to study for each class, arranged by week. These and supporting materials will be provided on the class website.
2. Page and Katz, “The Truth About Ben and Jerry’s”
B Corporation, “Ben & Jerry’s Impact Assessment”
Ferguson (dir.), Inside Job
Krugman, The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008, ch. 8
3. AVERT, “HIV and AIDS in East and Southern Africa”
GlaxoSmithKline, “HIV, AIDS and ViiV Healthcare”
Stanford Rural West Initiative, An Unquiet Landscape
Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, Deep Water, ch. 10
4. Friedman, “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits”
Heath, “A Market Failures Approach to Business Ethics”
Tierney el al, “Long live Walmart”
Hemphill, “Demonising Wal-Mart”
5. Evan and Freeman, “A Stakeholder Theory of the Modern Corporation”
Yunus et al, “Reaching the Rich World’s Poorest Consumers”
Starbucks, Global Responsibility Report 2017
Maitland, “The Great Non-Debate over International Sweatshops”
6. Feinberg, Harm to Others, “General introduction,” §§ 2-4, and ch. 3, § 4, extracts
Rawls, Justice as Fairness, §§ 13.1-2, 14.3, and 16.1
Powell and Laufer, “The Promises and Constraints of Consumer-Directed Healthcare”
Oberlander, “Between Liberal Aspirations and Market Forces”
8. Machan, “Some Contrarian Reflections on Advertising”
Lovas, “Advertising: The Uninvited Guest”
Lawford-Smith, “Unethical Consumption and Obligations to Signal”
Cline, Overdressed: The Shockingly High Price of Cheap Fashion, chs. 4 and 5
Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, chs. 2-6, extracts
Freudenberg, Legal but Lethal, ch. 1
9. Moriarty, “Do CEOS Get Paid Too Much?”
Heath, “On the Very Idea of a Just Wage”
Brynjolfsson and McAfee, The Second Machine Age, chs. 9-11 and 14, extracts
Clark, “Good Work”
Moretti, The New Geography of Jobs, chs. 5-7, extracts
Kalleberg, Good Jobs, Bad Jobs, ch. 1
10. Bower and Paine, “The Error at the Heart of Corporate Leadership”
Norman, “The Financial Theory of the Firm”
Miller, “Financial Markets and Institutional Purposes”
Cooper, Davis, and Van Vliet, “The Mysterious Ethics of High-Frequency Trading”
Soule, “Regulation”
Murphy, Who Regulates Whom and How?
11. Bennett and Parsons, “Privacy and Surveillance”
Wu, “Blind Spot: The Attention Economy and the Law”
Dierksmeier and Seele, “Cryptocurrencies and Business Ethics”
Lanchester, “When Bitcoin Grows Up”
Jones, Losing the News, ch. 5
Gans et al, On the Future of News
12. Hawken, Lovins, and Lovins, “A Roadmap for Natural Capitalism”
Henderson, “Making the Business Case for Environmental Sustainability”
Posner and Weisbach, Climate Change Justice, chs. 1, 2, and 6, extracts
Singer, “One Climate”
McDonough, Cradle to Cradle, pp. 17-42, 79-83, and 165-180
Esty and Simmons, The Green to Gold Business Playbook, pt. 4 (extracts)
13. Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, ch. 3
Scherer and Palazzo, “The New Political Role of Business in a Globalized World”
Velasquez, “Corruption and Bribery”
Barstow and Von Bertrab, “The Bribery Aisle: How Wal-Mart Got Its Way in Mexico”
Holloway, The Business of Tourism, chs. 5-6
Lansing and De Vries, “Sustainable Tourism”