Business Ethics

Business Ethics is a system of moral principles applied to business in the broadest possible sense. It is also a branch of philosophy dealing with values relating to human conduct in business with respect to rightness or wrongness of certain actions. Every subject of economic life makes moral choices, while business managers and owners of business have special responsibility in relation to ethics.

Business ethics almost always hits the headlines in the wake of scandals, but hardly ever when entrepreneurs and managers do good deeds. These are often met with a scepticism and usually given the profit motive, such stories are just “too good to be true”. Why so? After a short introduction to the origins and development of business ethics, this course shall present a more constructive approach based on the notion of “moral capital” or virtue. We shall also explain how the firm, through the proper ethical perspective, could actually be a potent force toward attaining the common good of society.

Syllabus Business Ethics