PHIL 215/ARBUS 202
Professional and Business Ethics
Spring 2025
Course Description
Calendar Description for PHIL 215 / ARBUS 202
Study of ethical and moral issues that typically arise in professional and business activity. What responsibilities to society at large do people in such business and professional activities as teaching, engineering, planning, architecture, and accounting have? How far should professional autonomy extend?
PHIL 215: View requirements for PHIL 215
ARBUS 202: View requirements for ARBUS 202
Description
This course is an introduction to professional and business ethics. Ethics, broadly speaking, is the branch of philosophy that seeks to analyze principles that apply in the moral evaluation of human conduct. We are (in part) economic animals who trade with each other in the hopes of making ourselves better off. And insofar as our actions affect the well-being of others, what we do falls under the purview of ethics. In the context of this course we will look specifically at ethical issues and principles of conduct that are relevant to professional and business contexts.
Topics covered in this course are:
Fundamentals of moral theory
Ethical decision-making
Corporate social responsibility
Equality and discrimination
Social action problems
Markets and the environment
Ethical issues in advertising
Business governance
Strategic negotiation
Whistle-blowing and ethics codes
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this course students should be able to:
understand and explain the fundamentals of moral theory;
assess the strengths and weaknesses of different moral theories;
identify ethical problems in complex professional and business related contexts;
apply ethical concepts and principles to particular business and professional situations;
evaluate alternative, ethically relevant, choices and defend a plausible course of action;
explain the roles of professional codes of conduct and codes of ethics in real world contexts; and
evaluate arguments for logical and factual strength.