Redefining Ethics
It would be very easy to write endlessly about the revamping of the American and even global foundations of ethics in this crazy mixed-up time we are living through. I am spending some time right now updating the syllabus for my ethics course this fall. I taught the course for the first time this spring and I was surprised by two things. First of all, I was pleasantly surprised by the level of engagement we had in the class. Granted that a large amount of the class grade was based on class participation and debate, but also, I believe the topics are of very high interest to the students and therefore when we engaged in either informal discussion or more formal debate, there was an extremely high degree of participation. This was so much the case that some students commented in their evaluations that while they enjoyed the debates, they felt that it was hard to get their voice heard since so many other students were trying to participate as well with their points of view. That was by far the best outcome I could have asked for. The other thing that surprised me was that this high level of participation was not met with universal agreement about how they perceived the course overall. There was wide dispersion in those results with two thirds of the class loving the course and the other third finding fault with a number of things from procedure to my opinions. That portion of the class noted a series of things they would improve in the course to make it better. I am trying hard to keep the good and change those parts of the course that were more controversial than not. Since I believe that I can take constructive criticism in stride and modify the curriculum and the process to improve it and get a more homogenous positive review of the course. We will see.
Perhaps the best aspect of the course was that I stumbled upon the idea of using current movies as the basis for debate on ethical topics of interest. It turns out that there are many choices and popular movies are rife with ethical perspectives that are very debate-worthy. I have found that popular movies are an easier way to get everyone on the same page and ready to debate an ethical case and from the comments I got, the students enjoyed it as well with only one of them wondering if it was academic enough. Since the topic of law, policy and ethics is a “soft” subject that has mostly to do with exposing students to the manner in which to approach ethical conundrum that they might encounter, I feel that having it be academic-light is a good, not a bad, thing. Now, as I go through my day and see news items and read articles, I see ethical situations everywhere I look and not only do I make note of them, but I clip the articles and file them digitally for use when formulating my next ethics course, as I am doing right now for the Fall Semester.
I have also had a chance to think more deeply about the framework of the course and the topics that I feel most strongly resonate in today’s environment. That is getting reflected in my thinking about what to keep and what to drop from last semester’s course. I am also inclined to keep some of the methods for grading the course and to supplement those with some added items. The same goes for the reading materials. In general, I am finding that one single text is not such a great idea and that I would rather pick and choose readings from the popular business press and from a wider variety of books that I feel attack certain topics particularly well.
As for the topics, I have also done some winnowing and supplementing. The basic framework of a business ethics course has not changed. It should deal with how stakeholder interests are considered in advance and in conflicted circumstances. The breadth of definition of the term stakeholder is particularly important and a subject worthy of debate in and of itself. Clearly, I believe it goes well beyond the equity shareholders of the company and extends to creditors, employees, consumers, suppliers, competitors, market counterparties, the community the company considers itself a member of, and society as a whole, defined locally, nationally or globally. If one wants to, one can also consider the universe a stakeholder because, as we increasingly see, companies have a meaningful impact on nature and the broadest definition of the world as a part of the universe.
While I feel that many of the central topics I have chosen to focus on are quite ubiquitous to the study of ethics at any time or place, many of them are also very specific to the time and place we find ourselves in right now. The best way to make the topic of ethics relatable is to keep the cases current and to consider all that is happening around us as we teach. A good example of that is that last semester I had a session on consumers that was focused on digital tech consumers with a specific orientation towards social media. I used the movie The Social Dilemma to set forth a case for consideration. While that was going on, the Elon Musk bidding war for Twitter was raging and I found greatly enhanced interest from the students in debating the pros and cons of the Musk bid for Twitter. Since the issue has not been resolved and probably still has a few chapters yet to unfold, my thinking is to incorporate the issue more specifically as Social Media Policy and focus the discussion on both Facebook (Meta) and Twitter as the most controversial members of the social media complex. I will still use The Social Dilemma to spur debate, and Elon Musk and his machinations will be a planned central focus for discussion as well.
I have fourteen weeks of class to do this and assuming I clip off the first lecture as an overview and introduction and the last class as a wrap-up and final exam review, that leaves twelve lectures to populate with topics. I have decided on the following list of major topics:
• Globalization
• Government and Regulation
• Environmental, Societal and Governance (ESG) Policy
• Consumers, Suppliers and Competitors
• Anti-discrimination, Affirmative Action and Socioeconomic Policies
• Truth & Lies – Fake It Till You Make It
• Social Media Policy
• Reputation
• Free Markets
• Individual Liberty v. The Common Good
• Civil Society and Public Policy
I know that only adds up to eleven topics, but I figure both ESG and Free Markets are worthy of more than one full class session and I will give more weight to those topics.
I will use a total of nine movies, of which five carry over from last semester and four new ones have been added. The movies I dropped were The Big Short, Atlas Shrugged, Blood Diamond and Flowers in the River. The first is too tongue in cheek, the second is just a bad and outdated film, the third is very specific to Africa and the last is really not a movie, but rather a You-Tube video. I am only missing a Globalization movie and since I have a foreign guest speaker who I’ve never met, I may pass on the movie use for that topic.
I have chosen to end with a film by Michael Moore made in 2009 called Capitalism: a Love Story that is typical Michael Moore Uber-liberal stuff that decries the capitalism that led to the crash of 2008. I am serving it up last so as not to give such a strong political bias to the course and more to have a fun final conversation with the group of students about what system is better than capitalism. Moore cheats and says that’s Democracy, but you cannot substitute a governance methodology for an economic model and get away with that cheap trick in my class. We will try to redefine ethics such that we find a better answer than that.