Course Information

Instructor	Professor David Emmanuel Gray
Contact	CMUQ 1039, degray@cmu.edu, @ProfessorDEG
Office hours	By appointment, or whenever the instructor’s office door is open
Class time	Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday: 9:30am–10:20am
Class location	CMUQ 2152
Syllabus	PDF.
Twitter	#BSE18.
Teaching Assistant	Fatema Alsayed, CMUQ 1207, fks@andrew.cmu.edu, @fatemaks
Course Assistants	Shireen Ahmed, shireena@andrew.cmu.edu, @Shireen1114
	Omar ElSaka, oelsaka@andrew.cmu.edu, @OMElSaka
	Mika Mustafawi, famustaf@andrew.cmu.edu, @MikaNotFatima

Grading

Participation (Twitter)	15%
4 Unit Exams Lowest unit exam is dropped.	60%
Final Exam	25%

Grade Calculator (Excel)

Schedule

Date	Topic/Readings	Assignments
9/2 (Sun)	Business Ethics From a Philosophical Perspective (Unit #1) (slides)
9/4 (Tue)	Business Ethics From a Philosophical Perspective (slides) Reading Guide. Rachels & Rachels, “What Is Morality?” Optional: Lin, “The Ethical Dilemma of Self-Driving Cars” (local file).
9/6 (Thu)	Business Ethics From a Philosophical Perspective (slides) Reading Guide. Sen, “Does Business Ethics Make Economic Sense?” Optional: Harris Interactive, “Only One-Quarter of Americans Say Banks are Honest and Trustworthy”.
9/9 (Sun)	Business Ethics From a Philosophical Perspective (slides) Reading Guide. Rachels & Rachels, “Subjectivism in Ethics”.
9/11 (Tue)	Business Ethics From a Philosophical Perspective (slides) Reading Guide. Weinstein, “If It’s Legal, It’s Ethical... Right?” Optional: Cannon, “Tylenol’s Rebound”.
9/13 (Thu)	Business Ethics From a Philosophical Perspective (slides) Reading Guide. Donaldson, “Values in Tension: Ethics Away from Home”. Optional: Zoepf, “Shopgirls”.
9/16 (Sun)	Business Ethics From a Philosophical Perspective (slides) Reading Guide. Case Study: “Vodafone Qatar’s Amazon Adventure”.
9/18 (Tue)	Business Ethics From a Philosophical Perspective (slides) Reading Guide. Carr, “Is Business Bluffing Ethical?”
9/20 (Thu)	Business Ethics From a Philosophical Perspective (slides) Reading Guide. Crisp, “Persuasive Advertising, Autonomy, and the Creation of Desire”. 60 Minutes, “Undercover Marketing”. Optional: Vranica, “Sony Ericsson Campaign Uses Actors To Push Camera-Phone in Real Life”. Optional: Poppick, “10 Subliminal Retail Tricks You’re Probably Falling For”.
9/23 (Sun)	The class is split between Lecture Hall 2152 (our regular classroom) and Lecture Hall 3035 (the auditorium on the third floor). 🚨 Be sure you know which room you are sitting for the exam. 🚨	Unit #1 exam.
9/25 (Tue)	What’s the Point of Business? (Unit #2) (slides) Reading Guide. Rand, Atlas Shrugged.
9/27 (Thu)	What’s the Point of Business? (slides) Reading Guide. Friedman, “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits”. Optional: Heracleous & Lan, “The Myth of Shareholder Capitalism”.
9/30 (Sun)	What’s the Point of Business? (slides) Reading Guide. Parramore, “How a Libertarian Used Ayn Rand’s Crazy Philosophy to Drive Sears Into the Ground”. Rachels & Rachels, “The Argument That Ethical Egoism is Unacceptably Arbitrary”.
10/2 (Tue)	What’s the Point of Business? (slides) Reading Guide. Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons”.
10/4 (Thu)	What’s the Point of Business? (slides) Reading Guide. Solomon, A Better Way to Think About Business.
10/7 (Sun)	What’s the Point of Business? (slides) Reading Guide. Duska, “The Why’s of Business Revisited”.
10/9 (Tue)	What’s the Point of Business? (slides) Reading Guide. Freeman, “Managing for Stakeholders”.
10/11 (Thu)	What’s the Point of Business? (slides) Reading Guide. Case Study: “Building Construction and Safety After Villaggio”.
10/14 (Sun)	The class is split between Lecture Hall 2152 (our regular classroom), Classroom 2052 (above the A.R.C.), and Classroom 3046 (top floor, above our classroom). 🚨 Be sure you know which room you are sitting for the exam. 🚨	Unit #2 exam.
10/16 (Tue)	Obligations to Partners, Employees, Clients & Consumers (Unit#3) (slides) Reading Guide. Moriarty, “Do CEOs Get Paid Too Much?” Optional: Mishel & Davis, “Top CEOs Make 300 Times More than Typical Workers”.
10/18 (Thu)	Obligations to Partners, Employees, Clients & Consumers (slides) Reading Guide. Epstein, “In Defense of the Contract at Will”.
10/21 (Sun)	🚨 OMG RAIN! 🌧⛈🌊 DAY 2018 (Class Canceled) 🚨
10/23 (Tue)	Obligations to Partners, Employees, Clients & Consumers (slides) Reading Guide. McCall, “A Defense of Just Cause Dismissal Rules”.
10/25 (Thu)	Obligations to Partners, Employees, Clients & Consumers (slides) Reading Guide. Maitland, “The Great Non-Debate Over International Sweatshops”. Optional: Blattman & Dercon, “Everything We Knew About Sweatshops Was Wrong”.
10/28–10/30	🌴 Fall Break 🌴
11/1 (Thu)	🙁 Yes, we are having class to make up for OMG RAIN! 🌧⛈🌊 DAY 2018 🙁 Obligations to Partners, Employees, Clients & Consumers (slides) Reading Guide. Meyers, “Wrongful Beneficence: Exploitation and Third World Sweatshops”.
11/4 (Sun)	Obligations to Partners, Employees, Clients & Consumers (slides) Reading Guide. Geva, “Moral Problems of Employing Foreign Workers”.
11/6 (Tue)	Obligations to Partners, Employees, Clients & Consumers (slides) Reading Guide. Rachels, “Coping with Prejudice”. Optional: Qatar General Secretariat for Development Planning, “Increasing Women’s Empowerment”. Optional: Dr. Sheikha Al-Thani, “Women in Qatar: Quotas, Qualifications, and Qatarization”.
11/8 (Thu)	Obligations to Partners, Employees, Clients & Consumers (slides) Reading Guide. Zwolinski, “The Ethics of Price Gouging”. Optional: Evans, “Uber’s Snow Storm Surge Pricing Gouged New Yorkers Big Time”.
11/11 (Sun)	Obligations to Partners, Employees, Clients & Consumers (slides) Reading Guide. Snyder, “What’s the Matter with Price Gouging?”
11/13 (Tue)	Obligations to Partners, Employees, Clients & Consumers (slides) Reading Guide. Case Study: “The Qatar National Bank Data Hack”.
11/15 (Thu)	The class is split between Lecture Hall 2152 (our regular classroom), Classroom 2052 (above the A.R.C.), and Classroom 3046 (top floor, above our classroom). 🚨 Be sure you know which room you are sitting for the exam. 🚨	Unit #3 exam.
11/18 (Sun)	Corporate Social Responsibility (Unit #4) (slides) Reading Guide. Carnegie, “Wealth”. Optional: Farbman, “We Don’t Want Mark Zuckerberg’s Charity”.
11/20 (Tue)	Corporate Social Responsibility (slides) Reading Guide. Porter & Kramer, “Creating Shared Value”.
11/22 (Thu)	Corporate Social Responsibility (slides) Reading Guide. Prahalad, “The Market at the Bottom of the Pyramid”.
11/25 (Sun)	Corporate Social Responsibility (slides) Reading Guide. Karnani, “Romanticizing the Poor”.
11/27 (Tue)	Corporate Social Responsibility (slides) Reading Guide. Case Study: “Qatarization in the Private Sector”.
11/29 (Thu)	Corporate Social Responsibility (slides) Reading Guide. Rangan, Chase & Karim, “The Truth About CSR”.
12/2 (Sun)	Corporate Social Responsibility Guest presentation by Vani Saraswathi, Associate Editor & Director of Projects, Migrant-Rights.org. Reading Guide. Pick one of the countries below to learn about: Saraswathi, “Nepal”. Saraswathi, “Indonesia”. Saraswathi, “India”. Saraswathi, “Sri Lanka”. Saraswathi, “Uganda”. Saraswathi, “Ethiopia”. Saraswathi, “Philippines”.
12/4 (Tue)	Corporate Social Responsibility (slides) Reading Guide. Frank, “Can Socially Responsible Firms Survive in a Competitive Environment?”
12/6 (Thu)	Corporate Social Responsibility Guest presentation by Fuad Farooqi, Associate Teaching Professor of Finance, Carnegie Mellon University. Reading Guide. Choudhry, “Why We All Need Banks”. Likierman, “Why We Need Banks”. Augar, “Go Back to Basic Banking”. Thomas, Hennessey & Holtz-Eakin, “What Caused the Finanical Crisis?” Benedikter, “European Answers to the Financial Crisis: Social Banking and Social Finance”.
12/9 (Sun)	The class is split between Lecture Hall 2152 (our regular classroom), Classroom 2052 (above the A.R.C.), and Classroom 3046 (top floor, above our classroom). 🚨 Be sure you know which room you are sitting for the exam. 🚨	Unit #4 exam.
12/11 (Tue)	Epilogue: Ethical Leadership (slides) Reading Guide. Plato, “The Allegory of the Cave”.
12/19 (Wed)	🚨The exam will be held from 8:30am to 11:30am.🚨 The class is split between Lecture Hall 2152 (our regular classroom), and Lecture Hall 1064 (next to the A.R.C.). 🚨 Be sure you know which room you are sitting for the exam. 🚨	Final exam.