One crucial skill of ethical leadership in business is the ability to consider complex, morally-charged situations and navigate them with circumspection, discernment, and principled-reason giving. When such leadership isn’t practiced—or doesn’t flow out of one’s deep values and organizational awareness—it is difficult or impossible to lead a socially-responsible enterprise. The papers for this class will give you an opportunity to think deeply about an ethical business case from the perspective of an organizational leader, then draw on the ideas from class to articulate how you would lead in the situation and why.
• DEFINE an ethical dilemma—an actionable, mutually-exclusive set of options for responding to a morally ambiguous problem—from the perspective of a business leader in a complex, multi-dimensional marketplace situation;
• APPLY normative or descriptive ethical frameworks to the situation you are facing;
• DISCERN what you think is best by reflectively considering your own leadership commitments, your values’ impact on your organization, and the impact of its culture on you;
• STRATEGIZE about how best to articulate your moral reasoning by modulating your message to fit the needs of different stakeholder groups;
• CRITIQUE your own argument by considering its weakest points and empathetically placing yourself into the shoes of someone who might disagree with your decision in order to understand how it might look different to them.