Ethical misconduct
Students must discuss 4 distinct examples of ethical misconduct in the business world from the video sources given below. (You may not use more than two examples from any one source.) For each example, you must answer these and you write it down as bullet points for each example:
(a) Identify your source for the example.
(b) Briefly describe the relevant corporate or individual behavior, being careful to articulate how and why the behavior is ethically blameworthy or questionable, and doing so in terms of the principles discussed in the course.
c) Explain, in detail, to what extent the behavior in question was owed to bounded ethicality or ethical fading. Good reports will be specific about what cognitive biases or situational pressures led to bounded awareness on the part of the participants, using as many of the concepts employed by Bazerman and Tenbrunsel in Chs 3-5 as are applicable (e.g. organizational goals, incentive structures, decision framing, in-group favoritism, overclaiming, discounting the future, moral disengagement, ethical spinning, selective memory, the want self vs. the should self, etc.). If you feel that the sorts of considerations emphasized by our authors are minimal or secondary with respect to an example, feel free to make that point and suggest what other factors are more significant in explaining the dearth of ethicality (e.g. disdain for ethics generally, character flaws, overly high priority given to money, a narrow view of corporate responsibility, etc.).
(d) Consider how you could have avoided falling prey to the influences mentioned in (c). Notice two things: (i) This is not asking what you would have done instead in the situation. It’s about how you would have avoided the blind spots. (ii) This is the part of the assignment that students tend to slight. It will require some hard thought, but it is central to the motivation for assigning the project, which is to help prepare you for your future handling of similar situations).
Sources:
The Big Short Wall Street
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