GBUS 8203 BUSINESS ETHICS THROUGH LITERATURE

The purpose of this course is to deepen students’ understanding of the role of ethics in management. The course builds on the conversations begun in the First Year Business Ethics course and addresses several key themes of interest for contemporary managers. Among the issues discussed are: the definition of success in business, race, gender, and the role of culture, the privileged place of the executive, and new understandings and models of what it means to be a human being. The course uses Socratic method to explore fictional novels and short stories as texts. Fiction affects us emotionally and allows us to see particularity and complexity within universally recognizable situations. Characters are multifaceted, and plots are multi-layered, which provides fertile ground for discussion. Reading these texts from a new perspective can impact a greater understanding of people and events in the empirical world. Students will explore certain aspects of contemporary literary theory and learn to perform close readings with the objective of deepening their understanding and ability to read complex texts.

Academic course objectives:

· Broaden and deepen students’ understanding of management, human behavior, complexity of issues such as race and gender, and the role of ethics in management

· Help students understand the complexities of great literature and deepen their understanding of human nature through careful readings of literature

· Apply new learning discovered in the readings to many aspects of business management

Elements of the course grade:

Class contribution                   50%

Individual paper/project          50%