Darden School of Business

The University of Virginia

P.O. Box 6550
Charlottesville, Virginia 22906-6550
Shipping: 100 Darden Boulevard, 22903
Phone: 434-227-1878 • Fax: 434-924-0726
E-mail: darden_leadsbi_director@virginia.edu

Paul Terrance Harper, MBA

Director, LEAD Summer Business Institute
Director, Special Programming in Diversity

RELG263.3: Business Ethics and Society, Fall 2009

Tuesday and Thursday, 12:30-1:45
431 New Cabell Hall

General Information.

Due to the spate of large-scale corporate fraud cases in recent history there has been an increase
in demand for more ethical models of business decision-making. Both management programs
and corporate learning centers have adopted new techniques for identifying business problems
that have ethics as their source. To go along with these changes, human resource managers have
started to look more broadly for people who are well rounded both socially and intellectually. In
reaction to the new demands of the business environment, business education is currently
changing its paradigm from “management” to “leadership.” This is a particularly exciting time to
be studying the role of business in society because of the new emphasis on different logical
forms of “thought” that derive from an inter-disciplinary approach to applied ethics. This course
is designed to fill a gap in the current structure of the University’s curriculum by bringing an
understanding of the historical and philosophical underpinnings of modern ethics to bear on both
“situational” and “role specific” case-based business decision-making.

Learning Objectives.

• To help participants become versed in the discourse of ethics and moral reasoning.
• To familiarize students with influential ethical decision-making models, such as
stakeholder management, and business strategy.
• To present students with case teaching and methodology.
• To produce in each student a leadership orientation to ethical problem solving.
• To push students toward designing solutions to organizational problems.

Target Student Population.

This course is designed for second, third, and fourth year students in the college. My motivations
for providing a course whose pedagogical content is substantially Darden, Harvard, and Stanford
cases is because it matches the overall teaching pattern of the management programs. A course
like this will prove invaluable in both the interview process and also on the job. Other students
will be interested in this course because of its applied nature, giving them an opportunity to
attach deep theoretical understandings and insights to important business decisions. Indeed, the
philosophical writings included in the course design represent some of the most influential and
challenging writers in modernity. But, whatever the motivation, students should be prepared for
an intense and engaging classroom experience that should fuel several hallway and coffee shop

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conversations…and maybe a thesis or two.

Course Materials and Assignments.

Course materials will be made available on UVA Collab and through the University Bookstore.
The cases cannot be copied or redistributed due to copyright laws. I have looked for the least
expensive options for books, and the total expense for the class should fall at about $75. I will
send out study questions for a week’s worth of reading every Friday afternoon. Though it will be
your responsibility for reading and analyzing the entire case or philosophical readings, you
should especially be prepared to cover your answers to the study questions.

Workload.

This will be a challenging course for those who select into it. I taught five sections of this course
now, four in Religious Studies and one in the McIntire School of Commerce, and received a lot
of feedback about the intensity of the workload. Students found the course design innovative and
engaging and the readings fresh and insightful. But many underestimated the quantity of work
that quality applied ethics demands. While I have made a couple of adjustments to the course so
that the workload is more evenly spread throughout the semester, I want to be sure that students
who opt in to RELG 263.3 intend to do their best work. Most students spent 4-6 hours/week
preparing for class, excluding work on the Business Concept assignment and the Philosophical
Write-up. Also, as a case-oriented course, students were cold-called often in class and, therefore,
had the additional pressure of having to be prepared and ready every class period. I came to find
out that this dimension was both appreciated and unique. Ultimately, I look at business ethics as
a capstone course and, therefore, will push students in many different ways and get them to
develop many different skills. This cannot be done without sustained rigor and intensity on
behalf of both the students and the professor. Those who select in to this system will find it quite
rewarding.

Attendance.

Your prompt and consistent attendance is mandatory to make a course like this work. I will keep
a daily record of attendance that will be accounted for underneath your class participation grade.
If you miss class more than four times you will not be able to earn higher than a “C” average for
your class participation grade. That could easily make the difference between a final grade of a
“B” rather than an “A.” I understand that exceptional circumstances do arise, but my experience
teaching has shown me that four excused absences are enough to cover these. Also, if you are
going to be absent you must send me an email or call me in advance of class. Stay home if you
are going to be more than five minutes late.

Course Design.

The course will be broken down into three distinct course modules:

1. Principles: This module will explore, through Classical Greek philosophy and literature,
the historical and philosophical literature, the origins of the ethics discourse and
prominent social and political solutions to moral problems. This module will end with a
philosophical summary paper.
2. Problems: This module will introduce contemporary ethics issues through the reading of
Harper, RELG263.3, 2
 business cases, newspapers and websites. Darden, Harvard, and Stanford technical notes
will also be used to provide students with early conceptual support for applied ethical
decision-making.
3. Performance: The final module will be used to bring it all together through a Business
Concept Competition. We will be looking at hot business issues, such as supply-chain
management, social entrepreneurship, and micro-financing. Unlike the first module,
participants will be pushed to move beyond merely identifying ethical issues but to also
design solutions for those problems. Participants will be presenting their Business
Concepts in a special format called Pecha Kucha, 20 slides X 20 secs/slide. A couple of
links describing this style can be found at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGaCLWaZLI4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WSKQd4uWKE&feature=fvw

Grading.

33.3% Class Participation

33.3% Philosophical Summary (6pp).
33.3% Business Concept Presentation

This course has a class participation component because of its case-based design and structure.
Students will be cold-called often and must be prepared with an informed opinion in the moment.
Neither office hours nor impromptu hallway conversations will count toward class participation..
The student will outline the materials or make a case analysis before class, send it out to the
class, and then lead the discussion of those materials on that day. The order of presentations will
be determined by random draw at the beginning of the course.

We will look at several philosophical and theoretical works in this class. A major component of
the course grade will be a short paper summarizing one of the philosophical writings assigned for
the course. Though business ethics is technically an applied field, I believe that it is very
important for students to be familiar with the theoretical roots of the field. This assignment will
be an opportunity for students to show a proper understanding of philosophical writing.

Grades will be curved so that class participants can be measured relative to their
colleagues. I find that objective standards for grading make little sense in ethics pedagogy. I
have also found that every class is unique and that only by curving a grade based on class context
can I truly reward those who come prepared everyday. The grade (A+) will be reserved for those
who receive perfect marks on all assignments and class participation; I gave three of these grades
total in two sessions last spring. Finally, about a third of the class will receive Bs. The difference
between an (A) student and a (B) student is the consistency of high quality work, e.g. (B)
students generally had a relatively low score on at least one of the 3 grading dimensions. Once
again, a course like this demands constant engagement and students will be rewarded
accordingly.

My biography: http://www.darden.virginia.edu/html/standard.aspx?id=14558

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