Week 1 Overview — Foundations of Business Ethics

Week 1 opens the course by asking a question that will recur all term: what actually counts as an ethical dilemma in business, and how should an organization respond when the law offers no clear answer? The Week 1 Overview page frames this with a short scenario: a company expanding into a foreign market needs government approvals, and someone on the executive team floats the idea of using financial incentives to influence a foreign official's decision. The page draws a bright line — a legitimate promise to invest in local infrastructure is one thing, but a direct payment intended to sway an official's public decision is bribery, full stop. That example previews the whole week: business ethics is a discipline with vocabulary, history, and structure, and Chapters 1 and 2 exist to give you that structure before the discussion forum asks you to apply it.

The week carries a light reading load compared to later weeks — two chapters, three required articles, one short video — but it is doing foundational work. Chapter 1 defines ethics, traces the modern history of business ethics from the early 1900s to today, and covers the roles customers, employees, and managers play in an ethical organization. Chapter 2 shifts to the organizational and strategic view: what corporate social responsibility (CSR) means, how companies use it strategically, and how a stakeholder perspective changes decision-making. Nearly everything you'll need for the discussion forum comes from these two chapters.

Overview Table of Deliverables

The table below reproduces the Week 1 Overview page's deliverable table. Two items carry weight this week, totaling 7% of the course grade — most of that weight sits in the Ethical Issues in the 21st Century discussion forum.

The Canvas Overview page lists four Weekly Learning Outcomes (WLOs) this week. They are reproduced below, each followed by a note on what it actually requires of you and where in the week it is assessed.

Notice that WLOs 1 and 2 map directly onto the discussion forum's two required elements (describe the dilemma's effects, then evaluate preventive changes), while WLOs 3 and 4 point toward CSR analysis and design skills that Chapter 2 introduces this week and that later weeks' assignments will ask you to apply directly. Reading Chapter 2 closely now, even though this week's discussion draws more heavily on Chapter 1, sets up work later in the course.

The required text is Gonzalez-Padron, T. (2025), Business Ethics and Social Responsibility for Managers (2nd ed.), UAGC, available through the Constellation website. Week 1 assigns the first two chapters.

For full term-by-term coverage — every named framework, key term, and closing discussion question — see the dedicated Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 deep-dive study guides; this overview only orients you to where each chapter lands in the week's work.

Three Required Articles

Beyond the two textbook chapters, the Resources page names three required articles that directly support the discussion forum. Each is summarized below.

• Butcher, D. (2019, October). The ethics of corporate social responsibility: The Business Roundtable took an ethical stand by redefining companies' purpose from short-termism to long-term value for all stakeholders and society. Strategic Finance, 101(4), 15+. Explains how the Business Roundtable's 2019 statement redefined corporate purpose away from shareholder-only short-termism and toward long-term value for all stakeholders — a real-world illustration of Chapter 2's shift from shareholder to stakeholder orientation.
• Butcher, D. (2023, June). The ethics of corporate citizenship: While ethics is often thought about at an individual level, it's crucial to consider companies' impact on societal issues. Strategic Finance, 104(12), 15+. Surveys senior executives' views on ethics and corporate citizenship, describing concrete steps companies take toward a more just and civil society. A useful model for what a genuine corporate citizenship activity looks like, connecting directly to WLO 4.
• Liautaud, S. (2021, January 21). How to set up an ethics advisory board. Harvard Business Review Digital Articles, 2–6. Practical suggestions for standing up an effective ethics advisory board (EAB) — a mechanism for operationalizing the "top management commitment" dimension Chapter 1 names as the most important driver of an ethical culture.

The Week 1 Overview page assigns a short video, Ethical Dilemma (The University of Arizona Global Campus, 2023), that dramatizes exactly the kind of gray-area situation Chapter 1 spends its first section describing. The scenario: Max owns a manufacturing company in a small town with few other employers. He chose to build his factory there, at higher labor cost than he could have found elsewhere, specifically to create local jobs. Over the years the company has earned a strong reputation for taking care of its employees and acting as a responsible corporate citizen — workers are loyal because of it.

The dilemma: Max's manufacturing process produces a byproduct that flows into the town river. The byproduct is legally classified as harmless and violates no anti-pollution law. But some residents living near the river have reported illnesses. The company faces a genuine dilemma — nothing here is illegal, so what, if anything, should Max do?

The video also gives a compressed decade-by-decade history of business ethics that previews Chapter 1's much fuller account, from the Great Depression through the 1960s consumer rights movement, the 1970s environmental crisis, the 1980s regulatory push, 1990s globalization, and 21st-century accounting scandals — closing on a note that AI and other technological advances call for organizations to adopt and enforce ethical practices supporting a more inclusive, sustainable future. See the Chapter 1 guide for the full decade-by-decade history.

Max's scenario is a useful model to keep in mind while choosing your own ethical dilemma for the discussion forum: it shows an ethical dilemma that is legally clean but ethically contested, involves multiple affected stakeholders (employees, residents, the company's reputation), and has no obvious single right answer — exactly the shape of dilemma the forum rewards.

Chapter 1 opens with Wendel Torres, a construction company CEO convicted of providing illegal gratuities to a public official after helping a friend — a case study showing how even well-intentioned personal ethics can create serious organizational and legal risk. From there, the chapter defines ethics and business ethics, distinguishes the compliance approach from a genuine ethics approach, works through moral relativism versus universalism in international business, introduces values, principles, and hypernorms, and traces the modern history of business ethics from the early 1900s through today's ESG and AI-driven concerns. It closes with the roles of customers, employees, and managers, and the four dimensions of an effective ethics and compliance program: top management commitment, ethical culture, stakeholder engagement, and functional integration.

Chapter 2 opens with Patagonia's evolution into a leader in social and environmental responsibility, using it to introduce the distinction between business ethics (preventing harm) and corporate social responsibility (doing good). The chapter then works through the major strategic approaches to CSR — obligation (the economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary pyramid), strategic philanthropy, cause marketing, corporate citizenship, creating shared value, and sustainability's triple bottom line — before covering how ESG measurement emerged and the current political backlash surrounding it. The second half shifts from shareholders to stakeholders: corporate governance, identifying primary and secondary stakeholders, the power/legitimacy/urgency framework for prioritizing them, and the four stakeholder engagement strategies (communication, consultation, dialogue, and partnership).

Week 1 has two graded deliverables. The summary below orients you to each and points you to the right companion document.

7.1 Post Your Introduction

Tagged to WLOs 1 and 2 and CLO 1, worth 1%, due Day 1. A brief bio post — hobbies, goals, where you are in your career, optional photo — that must also include three specific elements: your experience with organizations incorporating values, ethics, and social responsibility into decision making; whether you find addressing ethical dilemmas engaging and why; and how you'll use this class to further your career. Guided response: reply to at least three classmates in 100+ words each by Day 7. No outside research or citations required.

7.2 Ethical Issues in the 21st Century

Tagged to WLOs 3 and 4 and CLOs 1–4, worth 6%, first post due Day 3. Before posting, review Chapters 1 and 2, the three required articles, and select your own scholarly or credible article on a 21st-century ethical issue. Your initial post must describe how an ethical dilemma can affect both organizations and society, evaluate what changes could have prevented that dilemma, and support your analysis with two additional scholarly resources beyond your selected article and the course text — all cited and referenced in APA Style. The initial post runs a minimum of 300 words; two peer replies of 150+ words each, written as an organizational leader advising on prevention, are due by Day 7. See the Week 1 Discussion Forum 1 Study Guide for the full prompt breakdown and a complete sample post.

OMM 640 builds from foundational vocabulary and frameworks in these first two chapters toward increasingly applied analysis in later weeks. Chapter 1 gives you the words — ethics, compliance, values, principles, hypernorms, ethical lapse, ethical fading — and Chapter 2 gives you the organizational lens — CSR strategy, the triple bottom line, ESG, stakeholder theory — that the rest of the course assumes you already have. Nearly every later week's discussion, journal, or assignment prompt uses this week's vocabulary without redefining it, so treat Week 1 as the term's glossary-building week rather than a warm-up to skim.

The stakeholder perspective introduced in Chapter 2 — identifying stakeholder groups, weighing power, legitimacy, and urgency, and choosing an engagement strategy — is a framework you will keep reaching for whenever a later week asks you to evaluate how a business decision affects multiple parties at once. Likewise, the compliance-versus-ethics distinction from Chapter 1's first pages is the lens nearly every later ethical-dilemma case study in this course expects you to apply by default.

Given the Day 1 and Day 3 due dates, front-loading your reading pays off more this week than in weeks with later first-post deadlines.

1. Before Day 1: skim the Overview and Resources pages, then draft your introduction post — no outside reading required.
2. Day 1: post your introduction.
3. Days 1–2: read Chapters 1 and 2, watch the video, and read the three required articles, taking notes on Chapter 1's history and Chapter 2's CSR frameworks — both feed the discussion forum directly.
4. Days 1–2: select your own scholarly or credible article on a 21st-century ethical issue — don't wait until Day 3, since finding two more supporting scholarly sources takes real time.
5. Day 3: post your Ethical Issues in the 21st Century initial post.
6. Days 3–6: reply to at least three introduction-thread classmates and start reading peers' Ethical Issues posts early so your required replies aren't rushed.
7. Day 7: post your two required 150-word replies, written as an organizational leader advising on prevention.