STRT-282 Social Responsibilities of Business

Faculty:

Brenkert, George

Brennan, Jason

Shain, Yossi

This purpose of this course is to enhance your appreciation for, and ability to deal with, the ethical and legal problems you will face in your careers as managers. The course is designed to teach you how to deal with the ethical and legal dilemmas that can arise in the business context. Please note the emphasis on the word ‘how.’ This indicates that you will be required to master a method for solving problems rather than simply learn and remember a stock set of answers.

It is important for you to appreciate this distinction. In many of your courses you are required to understand a conceptually complex set of materials and demonstrate your understanding on examinations or in papers. This is not such a course. In this course, your job is to master a skill; specifically, the skill of normative problem-solving. More precisely, you will be required to develop three closely related abilities: 1) the ability to identify and analyze the ethical and legal problems that can confront you in business situations, 2) the ability to derive a solution to these problems, and 3) the ability to communicate the justification for your solution to others.

The above implies that you should not expect to be provided with answers to the problems we will be examining. In fact, we will often close our discussion of a problem without achieving any definitive resolution. The success of this course should not be measured by the number of ethical or legal problems that we resolve during the semester, but by the degree of confidence you feel at its conclusion in your ability to deal with the unexpected and unexamined normative dilemmas that may confront you in your professional life.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: MSB Students, Senior Standing

Course syllabi
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Fall '11: Brennan, J (description, file download)

Additional syllabi may be available in prior academic years.

Other academic years
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• 2005-2006 Fall and Spring
• 2006-2007 Fall and Spring
• 2007-2008 Fall and Spring
• 2008-2009 Fall and Spring
• 2009-2010 Fall and Spring
• 2010-2011 Fall and Spring
• 2012-2013 Fall and Spring
• 2013-2014 Fall and Spring

More information
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