Business Ethics: Decision Making for Personal Integrity & Social Responsibility 5th Edition by Laura

As leaders and as emerging leaders, we need to explore how to manage the ethical behavior of others so that we can impact their decisions and encourage them to make ethical, or more ethical, decisions.
The case for business ethics is clear and persuasive. Business must take ethics into account and integrate ethics into its organizational structure. Students need to study business ethics.
 
Business Ethics as Ethical Decision-making
So what is the point of a business ethics course? 
As the title of this book suggests, our approach to business ethics will emphasize ethical decision-making.
Historical Context:  On one hand, ethics refers to an academic discipline with a centuries old history and we might expect knowledge about this history to be among the primary goals of a class in ethics.
Thus, in an ethics course, students might be expected to learn about the great ethicists of history such as Aristotle, John Stuart Mill, and Immanuel Kant.  As happens in many other courses, this approach to ethics would focus on the informational content of the class.
*Chapter Objective 2 Addressed Below*
Ethical Behavior/Normative Content: Yet, according to some observers, learning about ethical theories and gaining knowledge about the history of ethics is beside the point.
Many people, ranging from businesses looking to hire college graduates to business students and teachers themselves, expect an ethics class to address ethical behavior, not just information and knowledge about ethics.
After all, shouldn’t an ethics class help prevent future Madoffs? Ethics refers not only to an academic discipline, but to that arena of human life studied by this academic discipline, namely, how human beings properly should live their lives.    
The Role of Influence . . . Yet, there is an appropriate caution about influencing behavior within a classroom.
Part of this hesitation involves the potential for abuse; expecting teachers to influence behavior may be viewed as permission for teachers to impose their own views on students. 
Many believe that teachers should remain value-neutral in the classroom and respect a student’s own views. 
Another part of this concern is that there can be a narrow line between motivating students and manipulating students. 
There are many ways to influence someone’s behavior, including threats, guilt, pressure, bullying, and intimidation. 
Some of the executives involved in the worst of the recent corporate scandals were very good at using some of these means to motivate the people who worked for them. 
Presumably, none of these approaches belong in a college classroom, and especially not in an ethical classroom. [Teaching Note: this would be a good opportunity to discuss appropriate and inappropriate means for getting students to complete their homework assignments. What teaching methods respect students? Which disrespect them? Why? Contrast this to managerial influence: are there some inappropriate ways for managers to get workers to complete a task?]
But not all forms of influencing behavior raise such concerns. There is a major difference between manipulating someone and persuading someone, between threats and reasons. This textbook resolves the tension between knowledge and behavior by emphasizing ethical judgment, ethical deliberation, and ethical decision-making. 
We agree with those who believe that an ethics class should strive to produce more ethical behavior among the students who enroll. 
But we believe that the only academically and ethically legitimate way to do this is through careful and reasoned decision-making. 
 
Our fundamental assumption is that a process of rational decision-making, a process that involves careful thought and deliberation, can and will result in behavior that is both more reasonable and more ethical.
Role of a Course: Teaching ethics must, on this view, involve students thinking for themselves. 
 
Business Ethics as Personal Integrity and Social Responsibility
Social circumstances are another element of our environment that impact our ethical decision-making and behavior.
Social Context: An individual may have carefully thought through a situation and have decided what is right, and then may be motivated to act accordingly. But the corporate or social context surrounding the individual may create serious barriers to behave in that way.
As individuals, we need to recognize that our social environment will greatly influence the range of options that are open to us and can significantly influence our behavior.
People who are otherwise quite decent can, under the wrong circumstances, engage in unethical behavior while less ethically-motivated individuals can, in the right circumstances, do the “right thing.”