LO1. Use relevant models and theories to reflect critically on their own behaviour in relation to individual and group level values.

LO2. Systematise, defend and recommend moral behaviours in a variety of settings.

LO3. Apply and evaluate relevant models and theories that seek to explain the behaviour of other individuals, groups and organisations.

LO4. Analyse and diagnose complex business contexts, problems and decisions from an ethical perspective.

Core Textbook:

Moriarty, J. (2022) Busines Ethics: A Contemporary Introduction, New York: Routledge


Weekly tutorial preparation readings will be primarily drawn from scholarly journals, such as those listed below, or specialist chapter.

Case studies and topical questions will be drawn from a variety of sources, including current affairs periodicals, television, film and other forms of literature and creative writing.

Students are encouraged to draw from different disciplinary traditions.

Specific examples of relevant scholarly journals include:

Asian Journal of Business Ethics
Business and Professional Ethics Journal
Business Ethics Quarterly
Ethics: an international journal of social, political, and legal philosophy
Ethics and Economics
Human Relations
International Review of Information Ethics
Journal of Accounting, Ethics and Public Policy
Journal of Business Ethics
Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development
Journal of Information Communication and Ethics in Society
Journal of Sustainable Tourism
Research on Professional Responsibility and Ethics in Accounting
Social Responsibility Journal
Work, Employment and Society


Other relevant texts include

Hartman, E. (2013). Virtue in business: Conversations with Aristotle. Cambridge University Press.

Werhane, P., & Singer, A. E. (Eds.). (1999). Business ethics in theory and practice: Contributions from Asia and New Zealand (Vol. 13). Springer Science & Business Media.

Both the above are available as e-books from the library.

This course is delivered through weekly lectures supported by weekly tutorials. The lectures are intended as an additional and complementary source of theory, application, ideas and critique. They do not replace the need to read the required texts every week. Lecture content is based on the assumption that students are familiar with the key ideas and theories from the weekly textbook readings. Wherever possible lectures seek to enrich our engagement with key topic areas, so may introduce additional theories, ideas and applications rather than repeat textbook content. Many theories and research findings are contested or controversial, so be prepared for some uncertainty or contradictions in this course – this can be uncomfortable for learners, but is an inevitable part of studying human behaviour. We will discuss some of these controversies in lectures and in tutorials.

As explained above, the course learning depends on a combination of reading, lectures/replacement activity and tutorials to provide a more rounded learning experience for all. Thus, tutorials are an essential component of your learning in this course. Students are expected to attend all tutorials regularly and to ensure that they complete the required preparation before coming to class. The communication skills developed in tutorials by regularly and actively participating in discussions are considered to be most important by the School and are highly regarded by employers and professional bodies. Activities in tutorials are a key part of the course assessment, relating directly to the student portfolio.

Group work

Groups and teams are a key part of this course’s syllabus – after all we are studying ethics and ethics related topics (how people should behave in business organisations, which are really just large groups of people). Group experiences and processes are as important to us as the actual outcome of a particular group task, with a particular focus on how you work together as a cohesive group or team made up of individuals with cultural/subcultural influences. Many courses include credit bearing assignments conducted in small group. Although this can expose us to the advantages of group work, it can also have its problems. For example, some groups can be dysfunctional while others can become instrumentally over-focused on ‘marks and grades’.


Please note. After the groups have been confirmed group members cannot change their groups and nor can a group exclude a group member under any circumstances, without the written agreement of the course coordinator. If any practical or personal problems interfere with your group’s performance at any time during the groupwork, you must immediately contact your tutor and your tutor will help you deal with any such issues. If your tutor cannot solve your issue the course coordinator will be consulted. Late enrolments may require some mutual flexibility, though enrolments are unlikely after week 2.

It is a good idea to hold a meeting with all your group members as early as possible. This would be well spent introducing yourselves and your cultural influences (nationality, family, education, employment, aspirations, learning preferences etc). This will help you better understand any differences within your group and start to frame your group’s ethos and values (actual and ideal). This process requires each member to think about and reflect on themselves as individuals and cultural members AND listen carefully to their group-mates. You could follow this up with weekly post-tutorial meetings to discuss how any group activities ‘worked’ for you (what you learned about the topic, your groupmates and, indeed, yourselves. This will both reinforce your learning and help you prepare more effectively for the individual and group assessments. You also need to keep a record of your groupmates’ contributions each week, to help prepare for the individual portfolio.

The information below is provided as a guide to assist students in engaging appropriately with the course requirements.

The information below is provided as a guide to assist students in engaging appropriately with the course requirements.

The University expects full-time students (i.e. those taking 12 units per semester) to devote a total of 48 hours per week to their studies. This means that you are expected to commit approximately 9 hours for a three-unit course (13 hours for a four-unit course) of private study outside of your regular classes. This time commitment includes reading the relevant text book chapter, preparing for tutorials, on-line activites and assessment tasks.

Week one: Introduction to sustainability, values and ethics

Week two: Theories of morals and ethics

Week three: Learning ethics and moral reasoning

Week two: Theories of morals and ethics

Week four: Values and ethics as shared and/or individual:

Week five: Ethical and behavioural codes

Week six: Professional ethics

Week seven-eleven: Sub-Topic areas (contextual application of ethics):
Indicative content, based on topical issues and possible guest speakers:
Research ethics
Scholarly ethics (student, lecturer)
Management
Marketing
Finance
Indigenous Australians and business
International Business
Accounting

Week twelve: Course Review

Assessment Task                              Task Type               Weighting                     Submission

Individual Written Reflection              Individual               15%                            Week 5
Group project and event                    Collaborative          20%                            SWOT week
Peer Assessment                               Individual               5%                             Week 8 or 9
Preparation and Participation              Individual               10%                           Weekly
Individual portfolio                            Individual                50%                           Exam week 1

                                                                             Total 100%

Individual Written Reflection (approx. 1500 words).
This written assignment provides the opportunity to consider your behaviour towards in relation to different contexts and people in your life (at uni, home and work) now and in the future. This requires you to use different reflective techniques to increase your self-awareness. The first assignment is about exploring the foundation underpinning, and reasons for, your behaviour. Within the context of the course, a key element of this relates to your behaviour within the course itself. Because of this, your analysis should include a critical initial analysis of your BUSINESS 2001 assignment group and your own individual role(s) within and contribution to the group as a whole. We will discuss such techniques in lecture and tutorials.

This task is required relatively early in the course to give you the opportunity to consider your pre-course behaviour (in different contexts – such as student, family member, perhaps employee etc) and think about how the theory introduced in the first few weeks can help you better understand that behaviour and the influences on it.

A key outcome of this assessment task will be to consider how your learning about key course topics (such as values, ethics, cognitive dissonance) is helping you – and can continue to help you – to empower yourself as an ethically aware individual, for the rest of the course and beyond. So, it is essential to identify personal strengths and weaknesses (perhaps like an individual SWOT analysis) AND propose specific changes that you can make to your behaviour to become a more effective course participant.

You must support your analysis with appropriate theory. All individual submissions must include at least four quality research sources. This sort of source is typically peer reviewed or presented as a scholarly monograph. Student textbooks, practitioner magazines and non-refereed websites are not classified as quality research sources and should only be used as additional references, beyond the minimum four sources. Any submission that does not use/apply a MINIMUM OF 4 QUALITY RESEARCH REFERENCES (EG JOURNAL ARTICLES), will receive a grade of no more than 50%. If you have any doubts about your sources you should check with your tutor.

Peer assessment

Each member of their project group should assess their groupmates, confidentially, based criteria provided. You must provide a mark for everyone in your group, presenting it as a percentage. You must include a written justification for each mark. Without a clear and convincing explanation of the mark, based on the criteria, your final marks are subject to moderation by the examiner. So, simply giving all your group members 100% or 0%, or any other unjustified marks, without a convincing justification, will result in all marks being revisited by the examiner). Effective assessment should always provide constructive feedback, helping your assessment to improve future performances, so you need to also offer some practical advice in addition to mark justification. Such feedback will include what your assessee has done well and outline some relevant strengths and areas that could be improved, sensitively suggesting possible weaknesses. To be constructive, such feedback also needs to include specific, realistic and practical recommendations for improvement. This is particularly important in this task, as the peer assessment is conducted during the semester rather than at the end. Therefore, it is a mixture of formative (supporting ongoing learning) and summative (providing a mark for past performance) assessment.

This is an essential part of the assessment as the course is based on the ideal that everyone has a responsibility to engage socially with other people (at work, leisure and study). Giving and receiving feedback of different kinds is a crucial part of that, whether praising beneficent behaviour, calling out damaging behaviour, suggesting practical improvements or seeking collaborative solutions to shared problems. Arguably, the most useful feedback is based around expectations that are shared to some extent; so misunderstandings of purpose and approach can damage such communication. To avoid this, it is important for your groups to spend some time discussing your expectations of yourself and each other early in the course. Indeed, it would be useful to agree an additional criterion for this assessment task – this can be added to the feedback submitted.

Group project (20%):

This assignment involves the three key elements of the study of ethics – systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behaviour. Student groups will explore a key ethical issue facing us today. A broad topic area will be provided as a starting point only; each group will agree a specific issue/question, from within this topic area, as their focus. This must be approved by your tutor, so you need to prepare an explanation of and rationale for your focus. This must be shared with your tutor before starting your project (within the first five weeks of the semester). For example, you may focus on organisational codes of ethics, the application of value statements or conflict handling processes as suitable issues. If choosing codes of ethics as the issue, we might ask if or how a code can be developed that ensures that individual values are not damagingly overwhelmed by powerful individuals or groups within an organisation.

When an issue/question has been confirmed and approved, each project group will consider which models/theories are likely to be helpful and start to collect relevant evidence. Evidence will include published and unpublished sources, including refereed publications, university websites, union and government publications and any relevant ‘grey literature’ that is available (the breadth of such evidence requires careful evaluation of the quality of different types of source). This may include public debates, ideological disagreements, actual practice in universities (especially relating to management policy, regulations and codes). It is also possible to draw on personal experiences and dilemmas, though these need to be treated sensitively – do not name other individuals or organisations in your work, except those referred to in published or openly available material. Please keep in touch with your tutor and raise any concerns and questions about the nature of your work.

Next, you must use relevant axiological and ethical theory/models to analyse and interpret the practice(s) that you have identified. A key part of this process is to explore the stated and possible reasons for the practices. For example, how is a code of practice or policy introduced and justified? How prescriptive or proscriptive is each element of it? What is your interpretation of the reason for the practice? Is it to address a problem that has been identified already or to avoid a potential problem? Who influences the practice? Etc. This process represents the diagnostic stage of your analysis. It will provide ideas that help you construct an ethical system that can provide meaningful explanation for and critique of the behaviour/practices being investigated.

Next you will defend and recommend specific action as necessary. This requires the group to make specific, justified recommendations. To do this, you will need to identify problems with the existing ethical system. For example observable/ inferred instrumental values not (ethics) ‘fitting’ with stated or inferred terminal values. Making recommendations requires specific actions being suggested and a critical consideration of the challenges and implications of such implementation.

The project will conclude in a final, end of semester event. Each group will prepare a contribution to a 3-4 hour exhibition like event. You will have space to use as an exhibition stand to introduce your findings to a varied audience. We will negotiate facilities for this, though they are likely to include a table and partition dividers/boards. The display may include elements such as posters, handouts, video presentations, mini face-to-face presentations/talks etc, depending on resources available. A key part of this event will be group participation on the day; so everyone must be present for at least part of the event and will be expected to engage with the audience and field questions about the project.

Preparation and Participation (10%):

As tutorials are an essential learning activity, students are expected to attend and participate in all tutorials. Marks will be allocated for course preparation and participation. Participation takes many forms and quality is often more important than quantity. Participation involves such things as sharing ideas and insights, raising pertinent questions, contributing answers to course-mate and tutor questions, reflecting on experience, suggesting examples of practice, explaining, critiquing and applying theories, contributing to debates, supporting (by questions and constructive feedback) providing feedback to course-mates' regarding their contribution etc. This includes face-to-face tutorial and online (myuni) participation in discussion fora.

Participation and preparation are inter-dependent activities. It is impossible to participate adequately in any class without appropriate preparation; similarly, preparation in isolation (eg without follow-up activity, discussion, reflection, feedback etc) is an incomplete activity in itself. Thus, marks will be deducted not preparing for class. Your tutor will spot-check your preparation and any candidate not bringing their written preparation to a tutorial will have marks deducted from the total possible each week (normally one mark or 10% for each time the preparation has not been satisfactorily completed and/or when not participating in activities/discussion). If you are unable to attend through illness, family or other valid cause please email your tutor to explain. Absence will NOT result in a penalty, as participation can include contributions to the myuni discussion forum and tutors may require emailed evidence of preparation, in the form of notes and write-and-reflect content.

Portfolio Assessment

Students are required to submit a reflective portfolio based on the weekly topics from week 1-11 and/or tutorial tasks from weeks 2-12.

One of the most important duties of undergraduate students is managing your own learning and many of your learning activities are designed to help you develop the skills necessary to do this. Lecturers and tutors provide guidance for your reading and structure lectures and tutorials to help you understand, evaluate and apply theories in the ‘real world’. One way that students develop their learning skills is by recording and reflecting on their many learning activities, especially when applying formal learning (eg of theory) to their practice (everyday experiences and behavioural changes). This contributes to future learning as well as providing a framework for greater self awareness and changes to behaviour. This is particularly important when studying about values, ethics and their relevance to moral and sustainable practice. In this course you will be expected to keep a structured record of your learning in the form of a portfolio of experiences. This will make up a part of your assessment while also serving as a key record of your learning. Thus, the main aim of the portfolio is to reflect on what you have learn, its value and areas that may require further study/action.

Early in the course we will discuss how the field of ethics (or moral philosophy) involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behaviour. A portfolio based approach to learning and assessment is particularly useful here. It calls on you to relate your behaviour and learning to personal, societal and professional values. In the portfolio you will need to seek systematic analysis and explanation for your and your group’s behaviour in order to defend and recommend (to yourself and others) behaviour in relation to group/societal norms.

In order to do this well, the portfolio needs to seek consistency over time. This does not mean it will show simple uniformity (behaviour is influenced by many things, internal and external to each individual). After all, a system is complex in nature. Portfolio consistency is more likely to show a growing level of self awareness and critical self analysis, where we are likely to raise more questions than we answer.

What will my portfolio look like?
This task replaces an examination, requiring students to submit a thorough record of their learning through the course. Each portfolio will include between 8 and 11 entries, each reporting (critically and reflectively) a key learning experience during each tutorial and/or lecture.
Each entry will have three specific elements:
1. A brief description of a specific event, situation or experience that offers an insight into your learning. This will normally occur within our classes, but some reference to your wider life-experience (perhaps at work, home or in another public setting) is also encouraged. This must relate to the “topic of the week” that the portfolio entry relates to.
2. Critical and theory informed reflection on number 1. This must be informed by theory and course content. The minimum requirement is to include at least one relevant, scholarly reference that helped you to understand the implications of the event. Any source cited must be discussed to some extent (simply including a citation at the end of a phrase, sentence or paragraph is not sufficient). Reference to relevant class activities and/or discussion is also essential here.
3. Each entry will consider the ethical implications of your experience. This is likely to result in, at least to some extent, a plan of action for the future. Do not try to be too ambitious here – you will not be able to solve the world’s problems in one try! Examples may include a plan to follow-up your learning more, framing a specific question to try to answer, or an intention to modify somewhat your behaviour at home, work, leisure or study. This is where personal analytic models can be useful (such as Johari Window, cognitive dissonance, SWOT or similar).
It is important to consider the three-element conceptualisation of ethics from our classes (systematizing, defending, and recommending) when writing each entry. You are unlikely to do all three in a single entry, but the portfolio as a whole needs to engage with all, in a consistent and (ideally) developmental manner. Better portfolios will show a developmental approach – it is unlikely that each entry will be wholly isolated from the others. Can you track trends of interest, value analysis, learning building on prior learning or relevant experiences across different university courses that you have engaged in. The final entry should take a slightly different approach, serving as a sort of integrated conclusion. This could provide a personal statement of your perceived attainment during the semester and how you think your learning has helped you develop and better prepare you for the next stage of your studies, life and future career.

There is no strict word limit for the portfolio as some entries are likely to be longer than others, depending on the topic and its significance for each candidate. However, approximately 450 words would probably normally be sufficient. Excessively long entries should be avoided as concise presentation is important in this sort of exercise.

The portfolio will be assessed in the following way:

Each portfolio entry will be marked on a PASS/FAIL basis; so all entries must include the minimum content (three elements as specified above and one relevant scholarly reference). Any missing or inadequate entries will result in a maximum total mark of 50% for the whole portfolio.

In addition to the PASS/FAIL element of the learning log, each candidate will select three entries that best reflect their learning and the assessor will select one additional entry at random. If you do not clearly specify your selection, all four will be selected at random. The final entry will also be formally marked, so the overall mark will be calculated as an average of these five entries.

Please note that candidates must achieve a mark of at least 45% in the portfolio to receive a passing grade for the course as a whole

Assignment Guidelines including Referencing Details

In preparing any written piece of assessment for your studies it is important to draw on the relevant ‘literature’ to support critical analysis. It is essential to reference the literature used. Correct referencing is important because it identifies the source of the ideas and arguments that you present, and sometimes the source of the actual words you use, and helps to avoid the problem of plagiarism (further information on plagiarism is provided later in this course outline). The Harvard system of referencing is widely used in the Business School. A helpful guide to observing the protocols and conventions of the Harvard referencing style and for writing an executive summary and/or a professional report is ‘The Communication Skills Guide’:
http://www.adelaide.edu.au/professions/current-students/downloads-forms/Communications-Skills-Guide.pdf



Submission

• All submissions for assessment must include an ‘Assignment Cover Sheet’, which is signed and dated by you (and ALL group members for group assessments) before submission. Note that Lecturers can refuse to accept assignments, which do not have a signed acknowledgement of the University’s policy on plagiarism.
• All written assessments should be submitted on myuni, in the assignments folder, as a single word document.
• Only one of your group members should submit ONE copy of the written group work through the myuni link. If more than one version is submitted, only the latest version submitted BEFORE the submission deadline will be marked.
• You must include a list of all your group members on any group-based assignment cover sheets.
• Please retain a copy of all assignments submitted.
• Assessment marks prior to the final portfolio will be displayed on the course website. Students are encouraged to check their marks and notify their tutor and the Course Coordinator of any discrepancies.
Portfolio marks will not be provided until the final marks and grades have been confirmed by the Business School.



Late Assignment Submission

Students are expected to submit their work by the due date to maintain a fair and equitable system. You should start early on assignments so that foreseeable pressures like work or assessment for other courses does not delay you completing assignments for this course on time. Extensions will generally only be given for medical or other serious reasons. All requests for extensions must be submitted to the Course Coordinator before the due date using the correct university form. Such requests usually require supporting evidence from a social service professional (e.g. doctor, counsellor, psychologist, minister of religion) confirming the circumstances that require an extension. Each request will be assessed on its merits.

Any written work that is submitted late, without prior arrangement, will be penalised at 5% of the potential mark for each day that it is late.



Return of Assignments

Written assignments will be marked with written feedback within two (2) weeks of the due date, whenever possible.