BUS-L360 Topics in Business Ethics: The Law of Compliance

• 8 weeks
• 1.5 credits
• Prerequisite(s): BUS-L 375 or BUS-L 376

This course will examine the law of compliance, along with accompanying principles of corporate governance, as a critical means of improving the efficiency and ethics of business organizations. We will study the internal controls, business practices and norms, operations, regulations, and laws that govern how business entities are managed and how the rights of a business entity’s stakeholders are balanced, as well as the various duties, rights, and obligations of boards of directors, officers, managers, investors, shareholders, regulators, customers, and whistleblowers. Special emphasis will be placed on the ever-popular phenomenon of whistleblowing, an increasingly important tool for ensuring compliance. The protections that federal statutes offer corporate whistleblowers will be examined, as well as the valuable role that whistleblowers play in the law and in today’s society.

BUS-L360 Topics in Business Ethics: The Ethics & Law of Fashion

• 8 weeks
• 1.5 credits
• Prerequisite(s): BUS-L 375 or BUS-L 376

The purpose of this class is to better understand the ethical and legal issues ever present in the fashion industry. The fashion industry is unique in that it implicates various business ethics problems that are incredibly difficult to resolve. This class will dissect the various unique legal and ethical issues in the fashion industry focusing on its effects on various stakeholders, including other companies, employees, the environment, consumers, and society writ large. We will begin with thinking about protection in the fashion industry, including trademarks, patents, and copyrights. At the core of this discussion will be what should protection for the fashion industry look like and how does it affect competition in the marketplace. We then will shift our focus to counterfeit goods and whether or not consuming or producing these goods is problematic. The latter half of the course will focus on the ethical issues of how the fashion industry, makes its products, hires its employees, and how it markets its products. In this section of the course, we will discuss issues like sweatshop labor, sustainability, advertising ethics, and the global effect of the fashion industry on society including its effect on race, gender, and sexuality. At the core of this course, is the question of whether the industry owes heightened obligations to society given its unique power and prevalence, and if so, how should these obligations be resolved.

BUS-L360 Topics in Business Ethics: Business & Law in the Information Age

• 8 weeks
• 1.5 credits
• Prerequisite(s): BUS-L 375 or BUS-L 376

Ethics has become an increasingly urgent topic of discussion in the technology industry, from questions about 'Ethical AI' to the ethics of autonomous vehicles and the ethics of our new digital media culture. L360 is the study of the legal and ethical considerations within the communities that interact and are impacted by technology. This course will focus primarily on practical ethics, drawing on formal ethics in limited ways as a conceptual tool to help identify and classify ethical issues that commonly appear in the technology eco-system.

BUS-L360 Topics in Business Ethics: Law, Ethics & Business in the Federal Sector

• 8 weeks
• 1.5 credits
• Prerequisite(s): BUS-L 375 or BUS-L 376

This course focuses on an introduction to the Federal government's implementation of many statutory and regulatory safeguards intended to prevent government corruption. The history of these developments over the last fifty years is punctuated by what became a common catalyst for the development of greater ethical awareness throughout all levels of government in the United States: the saga of the resignation of a U.S. President and the accompanying drama that played out in living rooms across America. It was in the wake of the aftermath of what would become known as the ‘Watergate’ scandal in the 1970s that scholars, business leaders and corporations in the private sector, and the Federal government began discussing the need for reform. The Federal government was in the forefront as they attempted to frame and respond to Watergate.