Welcome to Rice University’s MGMT 560, Business Ethics, in the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management, taught by Associate Professor Doug Schuler. This web-page includes materials related to the course such as the syllabus, written assignment instructions, announcements, and links to other web-pages.
The purpose of the course is to examine the ethical, legal,
and economic bases of decision-making. Business managers often face situations
in which any choice may lead to bad outcomes for certain parties. Related, they
sometimes are put into situations in which they need to treat someone poorly in
order to achieve a desired outcome. How does one make decisions in such
contexts? How does a manager decide who to harm, how much, etc? And can she
justify infringing upon someone’s rights or giving inequitable treatment in
order to gain something personally or for her company? We will examine such
questions by studying various bases of ethical decision making, particularly
major normative frameworks such as egoism, utilitarianism, social contract
theory, Kant’s ethics, and virtue ethics. We apply such frameworks to situations
as presented in business cases in order to systematically derive a satisfactory
solution. None of the cases have very apparent solutions; thus, the students
must think hard to make morally defensible decisions.
Copyright 2002, Doug Schuler
Please report any technical errors on this page to:
Webmaster Brett Solberg.