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French Language & Liberal Arts
2008 Fall Semester - Course Description
Corporate Social Responsibility
CEA Partner Institution: CEA GlobalCampus: Paris
Location: Paris, FrancePrimary Subject Area: Business
Other Subject Area(s): Management, Philosophy, Political Science
Level(s): 300
UNH Course Code: BUS350
Instruction in: English
Recommended Semester Credits: 3
Contact Hours: 45
Prerequisites: None
Description
All social human activity raises complex issues of ethics, values and social responsibility and the world of business and its complex commercial activity is no exception. Indeed, the subject of corporate social responsibility and business ethics has now fully entered into its own in this new world order of global markets and transnational decision-making where both domestic and international regulatory standards of commercial practice provide insufficient guidance to ensure fair and socially responsible economic activity.
Why are ethics important to business? What level of ethical behavior should we and can we expect from business leaders? What fosters the socially responsible and ethical culture of business ventures and organizations? And alternatively, what contemporary forces in international business today are degrading or corrupting the fragile and delicate tissue of ethical principle, value-based action, and moral constraint in the global economy. These are some of the thorny questions you will grapple with in this course.
More specifically, you will engage in a survey of the very real ethical dilemmas the business world faces: the costs of fair versus unfair trade and competition; corporate responsibility to employees near and far versus shareholder and investor interests far and wide; competitive pricing versus product pricing that includes hidden social and environment costs; using corporate legal protections and governmental regulation as a means to avoiding ethical business practices; and controlling the impact of multinational corporate governance on fragile political and economic areas of the developing world. And throughout this course, you will emphasize the dissimilar perspectives of, and responses to, these dilemmas in American and European business practice.
You will pursue this survey of ethical choice by reviewing the more egregious case studies in corporate malfeasance and irresponsibility: fraud, bribery, embezzlement, corruption, nepotism, feather-bedding, subornment, environmental rape and other assorted wrongdoings. But you will balance this survey with case studies of business leaders who chose to be guided by honesty, integrity and ethical principle in their business endeavors. You will strive to draft a balance sheet of this mixed record of business responsibility.
The purpose of this course is to enable you both to understand the ethical context in which business practice must take place and to help you build a conceptual framework of managerial and entrepreneurial action in which decision-making is posited upon a solid foundation of ethical consideration.
Throughout this class, you will participate in the interactive environment of small group discussions where these issues will be presented in documentary case studies, contemporary films, and by investigative journalists and visiting lecturers with the requisite knowledge and experience in this field.
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