Not specific skills or pre-requisites are required for this course.
Business ethics studies moral dilemmas and problems that arise in business.
The course aims to develop and deepen the student’s understanding of moral obligations and the good that business could bring to society. Therefore, it will be introduced the main concepts of business ethics and their relevance on ethical decision-making in business.
As a result of reading course texts, and participating in lecture presentations and class discussions, students will identify and analyse ethical issues in business. They will be able to apply the main traditional ethical theories to analyse ethical positions and formulate moral defenses in business decisions.
At the end of this course, students will understand business ethics issues and criticalities, in their theoretical and practical implications, with reference to an international dimension and related to the different professional activities (accountant, auditor, consultant, manager, etc.). Therefore, it extends students’ preparation to management and professional activities.
While corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability will not be the main focus of the course, students will study interconnections between business ethics and these concepts and the main features of both CSR and sustainability theories.
The course introduces to the concept of business ethics and its importance to both academic level and in terms of practical management of different kind of organizations.
The main normative ethical theories will be introduced with the purpose to identify a pragmatic, pluralistic approach to theory application.
Business ethics will be framed in the context of the corporation being part of a wider society. Concepts like corporate social responsibility and sustainability will be analyses in their main features and in connection with business ethics theories.
Then, in order to present how ethical decisions are taken (or should be taken) in business, ethical decision-making processes will be introduced and analysed also through case studies.
Finally, business ethics main issues will be contextualized in specific fields or with reference with specific company’s stakeholders (like consumers, employees, supplier, etc.).
The module draws upon traditional teaching and learning strategies in terms of lectures and seminars, coupled with self-directed study.
Teaching activities will include lectures, seminars and case analysis. Lectures will give an overview of the main business ethics topics. Discussions in the classroom will offer an in-depth analysis of specific aspects and will develop a critical understanding. Case analysis will be used to discuss practical implications of these topics.
During the lectures it will be required to students to engage in dialogue and exchanges of views on different topics. The directed study component is designed to enhance the taught and post taught input. Students could be required to engage with directed study reading before the module begins to support the lectures’ and seminars’ content. Students could be asked to prepare and discuss on specific case studies.
The course is assessed by means of a written exam, which will focus on the theoretical and practical aspects. In particular, the exam consists of open ended and/or essay-type questions.
The exam aims to value the achievement of learning objectives referred to business ethics topics. In particular, questions are formulated to value the study, the capability of understanding and critical thinking of students on these topics. Clearness, synthesis, consistency and critical judgment will be given particular merit.
Each answer will be graded with a score from 0 to 30 and the final grade will be the average of the grades.
Each student needs to achieve a mark of 18/30 or above. Any mark below 18 will be considered as a ‘fail’ and students will be required to retake the exam.
Results will be communicated to students through the formal platform ESSE2 or other formal University tool.
Students with the exam of 12 CFU (Business Ethics and Corporate Governance) need to achieve a mark of 18/30 or above in every module to obtain a ‘pass’ grade in the assessment.
Midterm exams are scheduled after completions of Module 1 – Business Ethics.
Course handouts will be available on the elearning platform (Moodle space).
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Changes with respect to what stated in the syllabus could be introduced if the course will be taught online or partly online.