PHL 203W - Business Ethics

Credits: 3
Instructional Contact Hours: 3

Serves as a foundation for the analysis of ethical conflicts arising in modern business. Develops a practical background in critical thinking, ethical decision-making, argumentation, and the justification of ethical positions. Examines concepts, case studies and topics covering issues such as employee and employer rights, the nature of profit, the nature of the capitalist system, justice, technology, privacy, due process, affirmative action, fraud, and the environment.

Prerequisite(s): High school GPA of 3.0 or higher within the last ten years, OR ENG 111 or ENG 111A with a grade of “C” or higher, OR instructor permission
Corequisite(s): None
Lecture Hours: 45 Lab Hours: 0
Meets MTA Requirement: Humanities
Pass/NoCredit: Yes

Outcomes and Objectives

Use a decision-making strategy to analyze personal ethical problems in the workplace.
1. Learn the various parts of the ethical decision-making strategy.
2. Write analyses in which they fully cover the points required by the strategy in order to reach a well-supported decision.
3. Discuss and evaluate ethical principles that are relevant to a decision, and use them in justifying ethical decisions.
Develop the ability to distinguish good from poor ethical justifications.
1. Explain the limitations of using non-ethical reasons to justify violating ethical principles.
2. Distinguish descriptive statements about ethical values from value judgments using them.
3. Clarify the fallacies in misapplications of such ethical principles as the right to make a profit and the rights of future generations.
Apply moral and ethical principles covered in the course to ethical problems in workplace settings, orally and in writing.
1. Indicate when a principle is upheld by a given act and when it is violated.
2. Explain which principles are more and which less upheld and violated by a given act or decision.
3. Clarify the areas of common meaning among ethical principles and the areas of difference among them.
4. Describe and clarify the logical relationships among the ethical principles.
Understand the reasoning, which supports the alternative sides of the major ethical issues studied in the course.
1. State and clarify the main arguments on both sides of the issues studied.
2. Learn and point out the strengths and weaknesses of the main arguments.
3. Assess the degree of support which relevant ethical principles provide for main positions on the issues studied.
Evaluate and to formulate arguments to support positions on different sides of ethical issues in business and the workplace.
1. Learn models of critical analysis by memorizing some of the main pro and con arguments and the main weaknesses of them.
2. Seek out and identify on their own, and then state and explain examples of ethical arguments.
3. Formulate their own arguments to support their viewpoints on ethical issues and defend them against objections both in class and writing.
Clarify, distinguish, apply, and evaluate the use of the basic vocabulary and concepts essential to critical thinking in the discipline of ethics and covered in the course.
1. Define terms.
2. Distinguish appropriate from inappropriate uses of terms.
3. Identify cases to which the concepts apply and assess the degree to which they apply.
4. Use these concepts and the vocabulary to strengthen their analyses of ethical issues and of personal ethical problems, orally and in writing..