Module Directory

This 10-week module is an introduction to Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility, with a particular focus on issues of Sustainability and Environmental Governance.

In this module you will explore the origins, practice and theory of business ethics and corporate social responsibility. You will be provided with the conceptual and theoretical resources to critically examine recent developments in corporate practice in a globalising world, in which business organisations are being expected to take on new responsibilities for social wellbeing and environmental sustainability. Identifying the particular assumptions that inform, but also constrain, the practices of corporate social responsibility and sustainability, this module explores a number of cases and perspectives to facilitate critical examination of the ethics and sustainability of business today.

The aims of this module are:

• To provide an understanding of the practice and theories of business and management as a complex and contested ethical terrain.
  
• To provide an appreciation of the emergent disciplines of Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Sustainability and enable students to identify, explore and critique their contributions.
  
• To develop students’ appreciation of the basis of ethical reflexivity and agency and awareness of potential inhibitors to their expression in an organised context.
  
• Through class discussion, reading, participation and assessment, to develop students’ abilities to engage in critical argumentation that is informed by, and sensitive to, their own and others’ ethical perspectives and values.

By the end of this module students will be expected to be able to:

1. Understand a range of ethical factors in, and perspectives, practices and critiques of, business and organisation.


2. Demonstrate greater sensitivity and awareness of implied and explicit ethical assumptions and beliefs in their own and others’ argumentation.


3. Critically analyse, using appropriate concepts and theory, management and business practices and the contribution of the fields of Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Sustainability with a focus on enhancing accountability in business.

Indictive Syllabus

• Introduction: What is Business Ethics?
• CSR and the Rise of the Corporate Sustainability Agenda
• Ethics in Theory and Practice
• Tools and Techniques of Business Ethics Management
• Ethics and the Employment Relationship
• Ethics, Consumers and Suppliers
• Civil Society and Business Ethics
• Regulating Business Ethics, the Role of Politics
• Corporate Governance and ESG Reporting
• Ethical Alternative Organisations/Summing Up

This module will be delivered via:

1. One 1-hour lecture per week
2. One 1-hour seminar per week

In the seminars we will discuss and debate empirical and theoretical research on business ethics, CSR and corporate sustainability and consider examples from contemporary organisational practice. Details of the necessary reading and preparation required for the lectures and the seminars will be provided on Moodle and on the module’s Reading List (on Talis).