ME2830 Ethics for Start-ups
KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Students must have a minimum of 120 university points.
The course is designed to reach the learning objectives by several activities. The basic learning comes from reading the literature, reflecting, discussing, writing and presenting the ideas and analysis. The course tasks are based on these activities. Each one is evaluated and together they form the final grade. There is no traditional exam on this course.
1. Business ethics in general.
a. Ethical theories.
This part forms the basic theoretical and analytical framework for the course. The theories are outlined in the main textbook. These theories are used in all teaching activities throughout the course. The first course task is dedicated exclusively to make the students understand the theories in a general sense through dilemma exercises.
b. Business related ethical issues.
The second course task is devoted to issues that are primarily those that business decisions makers face in developing policies about employees, customers and the general public. Based on the ethical theories, the students are focusing on one particular issue in solving cases.
c. Guest lecture.
The purpose of this lecture is to give the students an insight into practical real life activities with ethical issues in order to enhance the understanding of these issues.
2. Individual ethical awareness.
No business or organization will think and act better than the managers and employees in them. To reach the second expected learning objective, this course task asks the students to focus on their own ethics and shift the attention of the course from analysis of organizations and “the others” to an analysis of the thinking, attitudes and behaviour of oneself.
After completing this course you should be able to critically analyse the ethical behaviour or non-behaviour of organizations, and in your own ethical thinking, attitudes and behaviour in your professional and private life, using ethical theories and analytical methods. More specifically, you should
- have a basic understanding of normative ethical theories;
- be able to analyse them in business/organizational and individual contexts;
- have an understanding of the theoretical developments and research in business ethics;
- be able to identify and suggest solutions to ethical problems and dilemmas in organizations;
- be able to relate the contemporary practical work and efforts in the business ethics area.
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