Week 1: Business Ethics and International Responsibility - Lecture

Introduction to Ethics and International Law
Introduction | Business Ethics | Social Responsibility | Ethical Dilemma Resolution Models | Video – Business Ethics: An Oxymoron? | Practice Quiz | | Introduction | |
The E in Enron definitely did not stand for ethics, but Enron and its contemporaries like Arthur Andersen, Tyco, and WorldCom altered the lives of thousands of people and shaped new laws regulating business.
All topics covered in this course, from product liability to civil rights, from intellectual property rights to antitrust and consumer protection, will all make the same point. My goal is not to instruct a basic business law course but rather to create a dialogue involving questions and issues that each of our respective businesses must navigate successfully if they are ultimately to maximize stakeholder value.
We will do this during Week 1 by covering our two most important TCOs: A and I. These will be foundational for the term. As TCO A is our ethics TCO and TCO I is our international TCO, note that both of these TCOs will be important under and inside each of our topical TCOs (e.g., contracts, environmental law, employment law, etc.)

| | Business Ethics | |
As we move through the course, each learned TCO should remain in the back of your mind. We will build on them while learning the law. As you will find, most of the TCO A ethical strategies include as a first question the following: Is the behavior illegal? A "yes" answer will (usually) lead you to decide automatically that the behavior is unethical, unless the law itself is unethical (as is sometimes the case). Therefore, as we learn what is and isn't legal, we will want to utilize that information in solving ethical dilemmas. When we move our businesses overseas or to Mexico or Canada, as many of our