Course : Ethical Leadership

Unit overview

Business decisions are often judged by their financial results. Yet a profitable decision is not necessarily an ethical one. This unit considers the responsibilities of business leaders towards employees, customers and society, with particular attention to integrity, accountability, conflicts of interest and corporate social responsibility.

A central question concerns the limits of business authority. Can a company justify decisions that benefit the organisation while placing unfair burdens on particular individuals? Robert Nozick's account of individual rights offers a useful perspective, especially where economic interests come into conflict with personal freedom. Jürgen Habermas approaches the problem differently, emphasising the importance of dialogue and the justification of decisions to those affected by them.

These questions also arise in environmental policy, employment practices and the growing use of artificial intelligence. The unit considers practical cases in which legal requirements, commercial interests and moral obligations do not necessarily coincide. The purpose is to examine what responsible leadership requires when doing what is profitable or legally permitted may not be enough.

Keywords

Business ethics; ethical leadership; corporate social responsibility; integrity and accountability; transparency; conflicts of interest; stakeholder theory; organisational ethics; economic efficiency and moral justification; Robert Nozick and individual rights; moral side constraints; Jürgen Habermas and discourse ethics; communicative rationality; corporate authority and legitimacy; employee rights; environmental sustainability; business ethics and artificial intelligence; moral responsibility in decision-making

Required readings

• Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter. "Consequentialism." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy  (Winter 2023 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2023/entries/consequentialism/.
• Crane, Andrew, Dirk Matten, Sarah Glozer, and Laura J. Spence. Business Ethics: Managing Corporate Citizenship and Sustainability in the Age of Globalization. 5th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.

Complementary readings

• Singer, Peter. “Famine, Affluence, and Morality.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 1, no. 3 (1972): 229–243. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2265052.
• Railton, Peter. “Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 13, no. 2 (1984): 134–171. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2265273.
• Savulescu, Julian, and Evangelos D. Protopapadakis. “'Ethical Minefields' and the Voice of Common Sense: A Discussion with Julian Savulescu." Conatus - Journal of Philosophy 4, no. 1 (2019): 125–133. doi: https://doi.org/10.12681/cjp.19712.
• Wawrzyniak, Jan R. “The Utilitarian Stigma of Environmental Protection.” Conatus – Journal of Philosophy 3, no. 1 (2018): 89–110. https://doi.org/10.12681/conatus.18368.

• Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books, 1974. Chapter 3, “Moral Constraints and the State”, 26–53.

• Habermas, Jürgen. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Translated by Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990. Chapter 3, “Discourse Ethics: Notes on a Program of Philosophical Justification”.