Presentations
In groups of 4-5, discuss the following questions
➢What is your name and origin?
➢What is the most important
value guiding your life?
➢What is the most important
value in business?
Module information and Assessment
Module Information
Module Information
Failure Rate: 25 % of students failed this module last year. This includes
➢Cases of plagiarism
➢Cases of not following instructions
➢Essays mills and fake references
If you cheat and do not seriously do your work, you will fail.
Module Information
What is expected of you? Module Handbook (Read me!)
➢ watch online lectures on Monday The Module Handbook contains key
➢ attend in-person tutorials information. Please, read it carefully at
➢ check out Moodle weekly the start of term to know important dates.
➢ Be on-time
Preparing
quizzes
(10min°)
Important to get your instant feedback!
Module Information
Tutorials
After watching the video lecture,
reading texts and doing the quiz,
you must attend a Tutorial in-person.
The tutorial is based on discussions
and aims to help you understand
the main concepts, the case study,
and prepare for the assessment.
A typical week in a flipped model
1. MONDAY: 2. ON YOUR OWN TIME: ….PODCASTS, …..READ REQUIRED
1H PRE-RECORDED SELF-DIRECTED INFOGRAPHICS READINGS.
LECTURE LEARNING
3. BEFORE TUTORIALS: WEEKLY QUIZ 4. TUTORIALS:
SELF-EVALUATION QUIZ 2H TUTORIAL IN SMALL
(ON MOODLE) GROUPS (F2F)
Tutorial 1
Basic Rights and Global Labour Standards
Question
Think about the basic rights of workers: for you,
is it acceptable to exploit workers in sweatshops?
Outline
1 What is Ethics?
2 Deontology and Basic Rights
3 Discussing Zwolinski’s Argument for Sweatshops
4 Questions on the Module and Assessment
1 What is Ethics?
1 What is Ethics?
Ethics is a systematic study of our values
➢ What are the values that should guide your life?
➢ What are ethical and sustainable business practices?
➢ What is a fair society and how to avoid injustices?
This is different than religious traditions or personal
beliefs. These are important for us but people often
have different beliefs and traditions.
Ethics tries to use reason to find fundamental principles
that everyone could agree on… or at least clarify our ideas. Socrates
c. 470 BC
Discussion
➢If you were the trolley driver, would
you turn on the other track and kill
one person to save five?
Discussion
➢If you were the bystander, would
you push the large man and kill
one person to save five?
Discussion
A surgeon has five patients who
require organ transplants to live. She
can save the only by removing the
heart, lungs, and kidneys of a healthy
but unconscious patient.
➢Would you kill the one patient to
save five other lives?
Discussion
In groups of 4-5, discuss the following question
➢Why do you have different intuitions in
the first case than in the two other cases?
1 Ethics and Sustainable Business
Ethics studies the values at the core of sustainable businesses
Today, international institutions like the United Nations propose ethical values
to guide global businesses, such as the sustainable development goals:
Ending poverty and hunger, promoting access to health and education, protecting
gender equality, and developing renewable energy…
2 Deontology and Basic Rights
2. Deontology and basic rights
Your rights define your sphere of autonomy
- Within your rights, you are free to do what you want
Person 1:
Sphere of
Other people’s rights constrain your actions autonomy
- You must respect other people’s rights
- Constraint: You must not exploit other people,
i.e. you should not use people “as mere means” to your ends
You have limited duties of assistance Person 2:
Sphere of
- You must help others protect their rights autonomy
- But you are not expected to sacrifice your own rights
2. Deontology and basic rights
Other people’s rights constrain your actions
Exploitation: A takes an “unfair” advantage of B’s vulnerability
Person 1:
Protected
To demonstrate that A exploits B, you must show that: sphere of
action
➢ A takes an advantage from the transaction
➢ This advantage is “unfair”
(for example, it does not respect the rights of B)
➢ B only accepts because of their vulnerability
(lack of other options…) Person 2:
Protected
If so, A is using B as a “mere means” to achieve their sphere of
action
personal ends. A does not care about B’s own ends.
Discussion
In groups of 4-5, discuss the following questions
➢In the Roadside Example, suppose the
driver proposes to save the hiker only if he
becomes his slave for 1 year. Is this ok?
➢In the Sweatshop Example, suppose Nike
proposes to help poor Cambodians but only
if they work under horrible conditions,
without safety or benefits. Is this ok?
➢Are there relevant similarities and
differences between the two cases?
3 Discussing Zwolinski’s Argument
3. Matt Zwolinski’s argument for sweatshops (Zwolinski 2007)
I. Kant
1724-1804
Discussion
In groups of 4-5, discuss the following questions
➢Do you agree with Zwolinski that we
should tolerate sweatshop labour and let
workers make their own choices?
➢Do you think instead that governments,
businesses, or workers themselves have a
responsibility to help improve working
conditions in sweatshops?
3. Discussing objections to Zwolinski’s argument (Kates 2015)
Objection 1: Workers in
sweatshops do not give
valid consent to because
conditions for valid consent
are not satisfied:
- They have no valuable
option, they often lack
information, they are
sometimes coerced,
manipulated, threatened…
- Analogy with the
“Roadside Example”
where the hiker has no
other option and is
threatened by the driver.
3. Discussing objections to Zwolinski’s argument (Kates 2015)
Objection 2: There is a
threshold of bad treatment
under which you disrespect
people’s rights and dignity
even if someone is willing to
accept it because of their
vulnerability:
- Analogy with the “Roadside
Example” where the driver
asks too much money and
humiliating tasks to the hiker,
which is always disrespectful
because the hiker would never
do it if they were not in a
terrible situation.
3. Discussing objections to Zwolinski’s argument (Kates 2015)
Objection 3: Accepting bad
working conditions imposes
a cost to other workers.
Because of labour market
competition between
workers, individuals
accepting low working
conditions undermine the
collective action necessary
to demand higher working
standards
This undermines the
autonomy of other workers
(Kates 2015)
4 What can global businesses do? (Vogel 2005, Hsieh 2009)
This conclusion may be true
and justify avoiding immediate
legal ban or boycotts of
sweatshops.
But this does not mean that
firms do not have a moral
obligation to improve the
quality of labour markets in
developing countries.
Many argue that global
businesses like Nike also have
some duty of assistance to
help improve economic
development and global
labour standards.
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