Proposal for MBA Ethics Course for the College of Business Administration and
Economics of New Mexico State University
David M. Boje, Ph.D.
October 6, 2002
Summary: Currently there is not a required ethics course in the
Business College of NMSU. Given the recent debacles, the Business College, I
believe, needs to have an ethics course. This is a proposal for an ethics course
for the MBA program. It would be either a required core course or perhaps
just an option to Mgt503 (so as not to disrupt the current curriculum design). I
would appreciate your ideas and feedback on the course and its topics, cases,
and ethical traditions I am proposing. Please send your comments to dboje@nmsu.edu
Course Description: A course in ethics of business disciplines from
accounting, economics, finance, law, management, and marketing extending to
sustainability. MBA students will contrast situationist, universalist, and
postmodernist ethical traditions. The main case for the course will be the
Ethics of Enron. The course will also review recent debacles at Global Crossing,
WorldCom, QWest, and Arthur Andersen. In addition to developing a portfolio of
case reports and individual papers, students will split into teams to develop
skits on business ethics and do a semester long ethics audit of a local
business, industry, economy, or government entity. The course can be either
on site at NMSU or web ct-based distance education (examples of on line
materials are included in outline).
Center for Global Ethics - This is a proposal that CBAE and NMSU
develop a Center for Global Ethics. The purpose of the center is to increase
public awareness by promoting the discussion of business ethics in a global
context. The center also disseminates business ethics information through web
sites and seminars that critically analyze mega business debacles, and
demonstrate positive changes that ethical business leadership can generate. The
Center sponsors Tamara: Journal
of Critical Postmodern Organization Science, which is devoted to
interdisciplinary publications on global ethics.
Format: Two weeks will be spent on the following eight topics: intro to
ethics, accounting, economics, finance, law, management, marketing, and
sustainability. Students will work on three to five person teams specializing in
business disciplines (plus sustainability). Each team will develop an ethics
skit based on either image, invisibility or forum theatre approaches (based on
Augusto Boal's work), Students will do four individual short papers, reply to
four other student assignments with constructive commentary, do one case report,
and a semester long ethics audit project.
Topic Outline: Two weeks on each of the following main headings:
- Intro to Business Ethics
- Intro to ethical approaches (situation, universal, postmodern,
etc.).
- Intro to Enron on line case materials and resources - Enron
Case Materials
- How to use Lexus Nexus for projects
- Three ways Enron used Theatre (1. as technology, 2 as facade, & 3.
as life is theatre)
- What is Theatrics of capitalism? (how to develop your team skit using
image, invisible, or forum theatre)
- Buddy system is about creating dialog (you write four answers to
questions; you give commentary four times to other people's answers)
- Accounting & Ethics
- Enron case: transparency of accounting reports - Enron
Annual Report 2000 - in PDF format.
- Accounting at Global Crossing and WorldCom
- Arthur Andersen case (plus BBC movie on history of Andersen bankrupt
companies)
- PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Code of Conduct audits
- When will accounting classes do not teach environmental life cycle and
environmental auditing?
- Changes in SEC policy about signed accounting reports
- UK and US accounting association reform
- Current ethical changes in accounting practices
- Economics & Ethics
- Intro to alternative capitalisms
- Adam Smith and economics of Moral Sentiments (web research of Smith
books)
- Karl Marx and Das Kapital and the Manifesto (web research of Marx
books)
- What is the economics of global racism?
- The corporate (de) charter movement of David Korten (on line Korten
articles)
- Enron Case: Free and Regulated Energy Markets
- Economic ethics of the peasantariat: from Adam Smith to Gibson Burrell
(excerpts from Burrell's book Pandemonium (excerpts from book,
Pandemonium: Towards a Retro-Organization Theory. London: Sage)
- Nike Case: Amos
Tuck wage studies and Junk Science
- What is sustainable economics?
- Finance & Ethics
- Enron case" LJM and raptor off-the-balance-sheet partnerships
- Ethics of executive compensation (do they earn too much?)
- Ethics of executive stock options (is that root cause of debacles?)
- Historical shift in concentration of shareholder wealth
- History of financial scandal from robber barons to junk bonds and
Enrononomics
- Change in finance laws being enacted and proposed
- Law of Business & Ethics
- Corporate lobbying laws
- Enron case: lobbying, contributions, and no Enrongate - C-SPAN's
Campaign Finance Database
- NAFTA and ethics of trade
- Changes to 401(K) law
- New SEC laws and policies
- Stock Option law
- Enron and Whistle blowing
- Important law cases with ethics focus (e.g. limits on case awards)
- Is the Business College complicit in Andersen, Enron and other
debacles because of the lack of ethical training of MBA students?
- AACSB on ethics
- Ethics code of Academy of Management
- Management & Ethics
- Are managers and executives ethically-challenged?
- Enron case" ethics of leadership of Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey
Skilling, Rebecca Mark, Sherron Watkins, and Andrew Fastow.
- Positive examples of business ethics - September 23rd edition of Business
Week, article entitled, “The Good CEO”
- What is difference between 'managerialism' and 'stakeholder'
approaches?
- Business is not a democracy? Would democratic governance have
prevented current debacles?
- Enron Case: Boards of Directors and their cooptation by executives William Powers Jr Report. focus is
Misbehavior of Three Enron
Executives - Feb 1 2002 PDF File
- Trends in McDonaldization, Disneyfication & Enronization: ethics
of the entertainment economy
- Aristotle on Management ethics (excerpts from Ole Fogh Kirkeby's
2000 Management Philosophy: A Radical-Normative Perspective.
Berlin: Springer Press)
- Jean Francios Lyotard (1979) Postmodern
Condition book - on line chapters 1 to 5.
- Zygmunt Bauman (1989, 1993) and postmodern ethics (extracts from two
books: Postmodern Ethics 1993. Oxford: Blackwell publishers. Modernity
and the Holocaust 1989 NY: Cornell University press)
- Lyotard
- What is critical postmodernism?
- Study one author from - Contemporary
Philosophy, Critical Theory and Postmodern Thought
- Article - Burrell, G. (1994). Modernism, postmodernism and
organizational analysis 4: the contribution of Jürgen Habermas. Organizational
Studies, 15, 1-19.
- Article - Cooper, R., & Burrell, B. (1988). Modernism, post
modernism and organizational analysis: an introduction. Organization
Studies, 9, 91-112.
- Article - Burrell, G. (1988). Modernism, post modernism and
organizational analysis 2: the contribution of Michel Foucault. Organization
Studies, 9, 221-235.
- Tamara: Journal of
Critical Postmodern Organization Science
- The Academy of Management and Business College: complicity with Enron.
See May 10, 2002 Investing
on the Edge By John L. Pulley, Chronicle of Higher Education.
- Towards
a narrative ethics - David Boje
- Ethic statement of Academy
of Management
- Marketing & Ethics
- Sustainability & Ethics
Final Presentation
- Ethics audit of local company, education system or government entity
conducted by team.
- Individual ethics portfolio - contains ecological footprint lifestyle
rating and changes attempted during term, four short answer essays; four
constructive commentaries to other's answers, and summary of your
contribution to the ethics audit.
This is a living document that evolves with feedback - send comments to dboje@nmsu.edu