General Resources:

Reading:  Corporate Social Responsibility and Business Ethics, Ch 2 from Government Regulation and the Legal Environment of Business by Mayer.  This chapter discusses the importance of ethics to business, ethical theories and decision-making models, and why it can be difficult to establish and maintain an ethical corporate culture.

The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University focuses on a number of areas, including bioethics, business ethics, internet ethics, and technology ethics, providing articles, videos, blogs, podcasts and cases.

Website: Markkula Center for Applied Ethics

Website:  Business Ethics Cases

Video:  Markkula Center’s Ethics Video

Video: What Really motivates people to be honest in business (13:28).  This Ted Talk by Alexander Wagner examines the economics, ethics and psychology of doing the right thing.

Video:  Dilbert on Ethics  (2:22) (solely for entertainment!)

Why Study Business Ethics

Reading:  What are the Major Ethical Issues Business People Face?

Reading:  4 Reasons Why Teaching Ethics is Important

Video:  Business Ethics:  What is it and why does it matter?

Slide Show:  The Importance of Business Ethics

Short Ethical Dilemmas to put Ethics in Context

Video:  The Burger Murders (5:45)  How might a company respond to tainted burgers that have killed 3 customers?  The video briefly introduces you to various standards/models for looking at an ethical dilemma:  stakeholders, utilitarianism, newspaper, family, and mentor tests.

Congruence of Law and Ethics

Video:  Compliance (Rules) v Values (Ethics) (7:48).  Michael Josephson, founder of the Josephson Institute, discusses whether organizations should create an ethical culture based on rules or values.

Video:  Incorporating Ethics into Compliance (1:06).  This brief video is by Wharton professor Thomas Donaldson.

Video:  Introduction to Business Ethics (26:36)

Ethical Theory

Utilitarianism and Consequentialism

Video:  Ethics Defined:  Utilitarianism (1:46) 
Video:  Utilitarian Ethics (4:30)
Reading:  Calculating Consequences:  Utilitarian

Reading:  Best Outcomes:  The Utility Test
Reading:  How to Use the Utility Principle   (J. Brooke Hamilton at the Markkula Center)

          Reading:  Utiltarianism and COVID-19: The dangerous morality behind the ‘Open it Up’ movement (April 2020).  The analysis by CNN’s religious editor evaluates decisions by some politicians last spring to remove restrictions on businss and gatherings from a utilitarian perspective.

Deontology and the Rights Theory

Video:  Ethics Defined:  Deontology (1:56)
Video:  Right and Wrong:  The Trolley Problem (1:37).  This video compares utilitarian and deontological approaches to the famous trolley problem.

Video:  Kant and the Categorical Imperative (10:26).   Pay particular attention to the segment from 5-6:20 when the Crash Course explains Kant’s reasoning why you should never lie.  The original Kant example involved an axe murder; this scenario is depicted in another video (1:33) called Kant’s Axe.
Reading:  The Rights Approach (by Prof. Velasquez at the Markkula Center)
Reading:  How to Use the Rights Test (Hamilton)

Justice Theory

Video:  Ethics Defined:  Justice (1:28)
Video: John Rawls:  A Theory of Justice Visual Review in Two Minutes (2:17)

Video:  Introduction to Rawls:  A Theory of Justice (16:26)
Reading:  Justice and Fairness (Velasquez)
Reading:  How to Use the Justice or Fairness Test (Hamilton)

Virtue Theory

Video:  Ethics Defined:  Virtue Ethics (1:42)
Video:  Virtue Ethics (5:13)
Video:  Introducing Virtue Ethics (9:21)
Reading:  Ethics and Virtue (Velasquez)
Reading:  How to Use the Character or Virtue Test (Hamilton)
Reading:  Moral Bucket List (David Brooks) on resume versus eulogy virtues

Comparing Ethical Theories

Video:  Introduction to Business Ethics (26:36)
Reading:  How to Compare Conclusions from the Different Tests (Hamilton)
Video:  Utilitarian and Kantian Ethics (11:04)
Video:  Consequentialism, Deontology, Virtue Ethics (10:55)

Behavioral Ethics

Video:  Ethics Defined:  Behavioral Ethics (1:30)

Video:  Introduction to Behavioral Ethics (7:09)

Reading:  Why Ethical People Make Unethical Choices   (Harvard Business Review, December 2016)

Video:  Dan Ariely, “Our Buggy Moral Code” (16:21).  Dan Ariely, Duke professor of psychology and behavioral economics, explores why (and how much) people cheat in a number of experiments involving students.

Multimedia:  Behavioral Ethics  Watch the video or read the transcript to this PBS story that also features Dan Ariely.

Reading:  Why We Lie :  The Science Behind our Deceptive Ways by Ludhijit Bhattacharjee (National Geographic, June 2017)

Audio: Why We Lie:  Ted Radio Hour  You can listen to the entire 2014 program or go directly to shorter segments on cheating, (by Dan Ariely),  how to spot a liar, why we believe in unbelievable things, and whether technology makes us more honest.

Video:  Why Do We Lie?  The Behavioral Science Guys (4:57).  They discuss an experiment they conducted with high school students that showed 80% lied in self-reporting a score in a beanbag toss.  They repeated the experiment, asking students to sign an honor code (which they call a “moral wake up call” to wake them up from an ethical “slumber”) and this time 80% of the students reported their scores accurately.  Watch this fun video to learn more about the behavioral science underlying the experiment, and how companies can use this knowledge in reducing moral “lapses” by employees.

Conflicts of Interest

Video:  Ethics Defined:  Conflicts of Interest (1:39)

Video:  Conflicts of Interest (5:20)

Reading:  See Examples of Potential Workplace Conflicts of Interest  (November 2019)

Reading:  Conflicts of Interest Explained, with examples, case studies and embedded videos, including a clip from Dan Ariely

Reading:  More Wells Fargo customers say the bank decided to pause their mortgage payments without asking (Morgenson for NBC News July 2020).  Morgenson explains how the bank, authorized to put customer mortgages into “forbearance” by the CARES Act during the pandemic, did so to at least some customers without their permission, jeopardizing their credit reports and preventing them from refinancing their mortgages with other financial institutions at lower rates.   Could this be seen as a “conflict of interest?”

Reading: Business Conflicts of Interest, with common examples and how to handle them lawfully

Reading: Conflicts of Interest at Work:  20 Workplace Examples (December 2019)

Video:  Workplace Ethics and Conflicts of Interest as depicted in Steve Carrell’s The Office (1:59).  (for your entertainment)

Ethical Decision-Making

Infographic:  Framework for Ethical Decision-Making (created by the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics).

Video:  A Framework for Ethical Decision-Making (1:15) This video further illustrates the Markkula infographic above.

Slide Presentation:  Steps of the Ethical Decision-Making Process   prepared by Prof. May of the International Center for Ethics in Business.

Creating Ethical Cultures

Video:  Creating Ethical Cultures (8:23).  A TedXPresidio lecture by Brooke Deterline, Corporate Director of the Heroic Imagination Project.

Reading:  Creating an Ethical Workplace   by L. Meinert (2014) for the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM)

Reading:  Six Ways to Create a Culture of Ethics in Any Organizion   by T. Plante (2015) for Psychology Today.

Video:  Barriers to Creating an Ethical Corporate Culture (6:36) from the Markkula Center

Codes of Conduct as a Guide to Ethical Behavior

Video:  Code of Conduct and Ethics for Employees (2:25)

Reading:  How to Develop a Code of  Conduct for Your Company   Explains how to create a Code of Conduct that reflects your company’s values and beliefs.

Reading:  Creating a Company Code of Ethics   (published by AllBusiness:  Your Small Business Advantage)

Reading:   Sample Employee Code of Conduct Policy   Provides a template that companies could use to create Employee Codes of Conduct.

Social Responsibility of Business and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance)

Reading:  Can Companies Force Themselves to Do Good? (Jan 2022)

Reading:  What is CSR?   In this article, updated June 26, 2020, S. Schooley defines CSR, identifies four types of CSR businesses can practice, and talks about how to build a socially responsible business and avoid CSR efforts not related to the core mission of the company.  The author also provides examples of what he calls “CSR Companies.”

Video:  Business Ethics Corporate Social Responsibility (6:23)  This video by EducationPortal explores issues related to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Sustainability and Business Ethics, with examples of corporations exhibiting these values.

Reading:  What is Corporate Citizenship?  This 2019 Wiki post explains the corporate citizenship model and five stages in developing a company that embraces corporate citizenship.

Reading:  The Case for Corporate Citizenship (Entrepreneur, 2018).   Igor Makarov, President of ARETI International Group, argues that being socially responsible and acting as a corporate citizen is good for business, responds to consumer expectations, and enhances the firm’s reputation,

Video:  The social responsibility of business (17:25) .  In this presentation filmed at a TedX by the London Business School in 2015, “Alex Edmans talks about the long-term impacts of social responsibility and challenges the idea that caring for society is at the expense of profit.”

Reading:  Corporate Social Responsibility and Business Ethics (chapter in the Advanced Business Law and the Legal Environment textbook published by the Saylor Academy).  After defining ethics, the chapter briefly examines several ethical theories and a decision-making model before turning to Corporate Governance and CSR issues.

Reading:  The ESG investing conundrum: Finding meaning behind the metrics    (July 2021)  Judy Samuelson of the Aspen Institute Business and Society Program explores the difficulty of developing metrics for measuring ESG initiatives and offers her thoughts on whether disclosure requirements and principles, like those issued by the UK in July, are sufficient.

Ethics, Capitalism, and Profit

Whether corporations should adhere to the more traditional shareholder primacy model espoused by Milton Friedman (first duty of the corporation is to return a profit to its shareholders) or adopt a stakeholder model that values the role of multiple corporate stakeholders, has become a “hot topic” in corporate governance and ethics discussions.  Here are several explanations of the stakeholder approach.

Reading:  Milton Friedman, The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits (1970)

Reading:  “Business Roundtable Redefines the Purpose of a Corporation to Promote ‘An Economy That Serves All Americans’” (August 2019), reversing the organization’s position after nearly 20 years endorsing the shareholder primacy views of Milton Friedman and others.  Still premised on the belief that the free-market system is the best means to generate jobs, provide economic opportunities, etc., the statement acknowledges that corporations need to add value to all stakeholders, including customers, employees, suppliers, and communities, in addition to shareholders.  The Roundtable reaffirmed the statement in 2021, which has now been endorsed by nearly 200 large American companies.  For a list of how companies are implementing the statement, you may want to read Anniversary of Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation  (August 2021).

Reading:  B Corps are businesses committed to using their profit for good (Business Insider March 2020).  After noting that B Corps are rated each year on their “environmental and social performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose,” the article identifies 14 companies that do this.

Video:  Profit’s Not Always the Point (Ted Talks 7:49).  In this TedTalk, Harish Manwani, COO of Unilever, looks beyond profit to argue that 21st century businesses should include “value, purpose and sustainability” in their C-Suite decision-making.

In his annual letters to CEOs, clients, and shareholders, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink discusses issues like board diversity, shareholder activism, CSR, and other Investment Stewardship priorities for that year.  If you’re interested in this issue, here are some of his recent letters, and some of the comments his 2018 letter generated.

Reading:  Larry Fink’s 2022 letter to CEOs, “The Power of Capitalism.”

Reading:  Larry Fink’s 2021 letter to clients, “Net Zero:  A Fiduciary Approach,” where Fink commits Blackrock to the goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Reading:  Larry Fink’s 2020 letter,  “A Fundamental Reshaping of Finance” (stressing ESG and the risk of climate change)

Reading:  Larry Fink’s 2019 letter   “Profit and Purpose”

Reading:  Larry Fink’s 2018 letter,  “A Sense of Purpose”

Reading:  Vito Rancelli, “Did BlackRock’s Larry Fink Go Too Far?” (Barron’s, January 20, 2018)

Reading:  Judith Samuelson’s op-ed piece, “Larry Fink’s letter to CEOs is about more than “social initiatives”
(January 18, 2018)

Video:  Howard Schultz on Taxes and CSR (6:11).  Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz talks about taxes and CSR for Bloomberg as the company prepared to enter the Italian market in 2017.

Foreign Corrupt Practices

Reading:  Overview of the FCPA (Department of Justice)

Video:  History of the FCPA (3:45)  (from Frontline)