Leading Ethically

1 Credit · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

“You can run, but you can’t hide.” What boxer Joe Louis is reported to have said about his ring opponents could also be said about you and ethical challenges. You can run from them, but you can’t hide from them. They will confront you in your personal life and in your professional life. Indeed, in all likelihood, they already have. Leadership or ethics? Leadership and ethics? Some people think you have to choose between the two. The premise of this course is that leadership and ethics are two sides of the same coin. The ideal is ethical leadership. It’s not only ideal, but it’s possible (though not always easy) to practice both. That is what this course is all about. This course will help prepare you to deal more successfully with some of the kinds of ethical challenges you might face in your career. It will do so by using case studies of people, leaders at various levels, some real and some fictional, in different kinds of settings, who have been confronted with ethical challenges, and by introducing you to various concepts and frameworks for moral reasoning and ethical decision-making. Applying the concepts and frameworks to the case studies should help you build your own tool kit for moral reasoning and ethical decision-making --- helping you become an ethical leader. We will be analyzing various actors in the case studies, but in the end, this course is not about them, it’s about you. This is a course in applied ethics or practical ethics, one that does not fall into one of the traditional academic disciplines, but rather should appeal to students with various academic majors. It will help prepare you to deal more successfully with some of the kinds of ethical challenges you might face in your career. It will do so by using case studies of real people who have been confronted with ethical challenges, and by introducing you to various concepts and frameworks for moral reasoning and ethical decision-making.