Introduction: Duties and Dialogue

This text takes the form of a dialogue between a student and teacher. It aims to capture much of what is commonly taught in a course on business ethics in a readable Q&A format. Unlike many other texts on business ethics, the approach taken here focuses on duties: fiduciary duties to shareholders or partners, ethical duties, employment law duties, agency duties, and so on. It does so to explore the central tension that arises when considering the relationship between business and society–many people working for a business want to use the business as a platform for what they consider good, and yet most popular methods of business organization create legal responsibilities to make money for another person. In other words, what one might consider ethical duties towards local communities, the environment, and other stakeholders may often appear to conflict with the fiduciary duty owed to shareholders or partners to produce a profit. We will explore many aspects of this tension, from (1) ways the law requires (or not!) profitmaking, to (2) ways that considering stakeholder needs may help with seeking profit, to (3) ways to think about ethics in a business setting and how that relates to (1) and (2).

You may think that considering “100 Questions” on this theme is too many, but many of the answers offered are relatively short (though some are long, be warned), and if you engage the material, you will find by the end that you have many additional questions to pose. You will also find that material on business ethics rarely offers specific, concrete answers to resolve ethical dilemmas. Rather, it offers a series of frameworks, guidelines, and principles that may help you resolve real-world situations in a thoughtful manner. This is because law, ethics, and the theories developed to help understand the relationship between business and society are not “mathematical”, with specific inputs mapping to specific outputs. Rather, they consider the great sweep and scope of actual human relationships and responsibilities, which are wonderfully complex.

Finally, you will see a set of one or more “consider further” exercises at the end of each Question (also referred to as a “chapter”). These may be used for class discussion, exercises, or further reflection. They are meant to engage you with the material in terms of businesses and issues that you find interesting. They are also meant to be shared with others. In a physical classroom setting, this could mean doing a class presentation or leading a class discussion. In an online class, it might mean posting on a discussion board, recording a video, or engaging in a group video chat around the topic. The central premise is that you learn the material best when you are trying to convey its application to others.

Good luck!

Licensing information: This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license with some exceptions. See https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. Images are from Unsplash and Nappy.co with the cover image by @ton1_g.