(Caution! This module is still under development and changes are planned for the near future.) Recent work in moral psychology has established the profound impact that the context in which business is carried out has on business practices and practitioners. Moral ecologies are defined here as the various nested and overlapping social and organizational contexts that form the backdrop of human behavior and actions. This module is designed to help students identify different moral ecologies and design successful moral careers to respond to their special challenges. This module falls within the corporate governance unit of the courses Business, Society, and Government (GERE 6055) and Corporate Leadership and Social Responsibility (ADMI 3405). It has been developed through a National Science Foundation funded project, "Collaborative Development of Ethics Across the Curriculum Resources and Sharing of Best Practices," NSF-SES-0551779, also called the EAC Toolkit.
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Thought experiment: plato--the ring of gyges
The ring of gyges (plato's republic ii, s359)
Gyges a poor shepherd is tending his flock when there is an earthquake. A hugh crack opens in the earth to expose a sarcopagus. Gyges reaches in and takes the ring that draws his attention. Later, when he is talking among friends, he notices that he becomes invisible when he turns the ring in toward himself. He tries this out a few times and then forms his plans. Invisible, he gains entry to the king's castle and rapes the queen. Drawing her into his nefarious plan, they kill the king and take over the kingdom. Gyges marries the queen and becomes ruler of a large and wealthy kingdom. Somehow it doesn't seem fit to say that he lives "happily ever after." But, since he is never caught, it doesn't follow that his ill-gotten gain has made him miserable.
Before finding his ring, Gyges was, at least outwardly, a well-behaved, just citizen. But the combination of vast power and no accountability drew Gyges over to the dark side. Does the human character, like that of Gyges, dissolve in the face of temptation and lack of accountability? Is the threat of punishment necessary to keep individuals moral? Is visibility and the threat of punishment all that stands between an individual and a life of injustice?
Thought experiment: the milgram experiments
From 1960 until 1963, Stanley Milgram, a social psychologist, carried out a series of experiments on around 1000 subjects. Each experiment brought together three participants, a subject (or teacher), a learner, and an experimenter. In the initial orientation, the experimenter told the subject/teacher and the learner that they were about to participate in an experiment designed to measure the influence of punishment (in the form of electrical shocks) on learning. The learner was presented with information. The teacher then asked questions based on this information. If the learner answered correctly, then they went on to the next question. If the learner answered incorrectly, then he was given an electrical shock by the teacher. With each missed question the intensity of the shock increased. The experiment continued until all the questions were asked and answered.
