Management and Business Ethics · EMI · NTUST College of Management
Eight frameworks, five cases, one final report
Every case in the bank can be argued two ways. None of them can be won by moral intuition. What separates a strong report from a weak one is not the verdict you reach but the framework you apply, the decision you apply it to, and the answer you rule out.
Naming the eight Chapter 6 frameworks and showing which case each one was chosen to exercise.
A substitute for the textbook exhibits. Keep Chapter 6 open beside these slides; the exhibits themselves are not reproduced here.
Every slide has a Listen button that reads an English summary aloud. Use it to check your own understanding after you read the slide.
Where Chapter 6 sits
The ethics layer is requirement (2) — and the largest single block of marks
| # | Requirement | Where it is assessed |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Analyse a real organisation or industry using the frameworks of this course | Q1, Q6–Q9 · 30 pts |
| 2 | Explicit business ethics and CSR analysis: identify the ethical issues, map the stakeholders affected, assess the conduct against ethical criteria and CSR expectations | Q2, Q3, Q4, Q5 · 45 pts |
| 3 | Close with a recommended course of action and the reasoning that supports it | Q10 · 15 pts |
| 4 | Report and presentation both in English | Throughout · 10 pts |
Note on language. Errors that do not obstruct meaning carry no penalty. Using a management concept incorrectly is a content error, not a language error, and it does.
The bank
Each case blocks the easy route to a verdict
| Case | Organisation and episode | Why it cannot be won by intuition | Framework that does the work |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Ethereum — The DAO hack and hard fork, 2016 | No rule was broken. The code executed exactly as written. | 6.4 ethics tests · 6.7 intensity |
| 02 | Apple Card — credit limits, 2019 | The regulator examined it and found no unlawful discrimination. | 6.7 intensity · 6.4 tests |
| 03 | OpenAI — the board crisis, November 2023 | The board never published its reasons; a later review ruled out the obvious ones. | Stakeholders · 6.2 posture |
| 04 | Tesla — naming “Full Self-Driving” | The company’s legal and technical defence is genuinely strong. | 6.7 intensity · 6.1 views |
| 05 | TSMC — the 2021 Taiwan drought | The firm broke no rule and did not make the allocation decision. | 6.3 shades of green |
Exhibit 6.1
Classical view vs. socioeconomic view
Management’s only social responsibility is to maximise profits for the owners. Spending shareholders’ money on social causes is spending other people’s money without their consent.
Costs rise, prices rise, competitiveness falls; managers lack the expertise and the mandate to make social decisions.
The organisation is more than an economic institution. Social involvement protects long-run profit, pre-empts regulation, and answers the public expectation that created the licence to operate.
Businesses have the resources, and problems they helped create are theirs to address.
The rule for your report. State the classical position at full strength before you answer it. “Frameworks named but not applied” and “the profit argument dismissed rather than engaged” are both listed in the rubric as weak work.
Exhibit 6.2
Three postures, told apart by three questions
Does only what the law requires. Economic and legal criteria only.
Responds to popular social needs as they arise. Pragmatic, means-oriented, short-term.
An ethical commitment pursued for its own sake. Long-term, ends-oriented.
| Ask of each decision | Responsiveness | Responsibility |
|---|---|---|
| Ethical or pragmatic? | Pragmatic | Ethical |
| Means or ends? | Means | Ends |
| Short-term or long-term? | Short-term | Long-term |
Apply it per decision, not per firm. In Case 02 the same company looks responsive in November 2019 and arguably responsible in 2021. The analytical prize is explaining the movement.
Exhibit 6.3
The only green-management case in the bank — Case 05, TSMC
Obeys environmental law. Nothing beyond compliance.
Responds to the environmental preferences of customers.
Responds to the demands of multiple groups — customers, suppliers, communities.
Actively seeks ways to respect and preserve the earth and its natural resources, including where no one is demanding it.
Do not use it as one label. Score the firm separately for water and for energy. A company that recycles water at world-leading rates while its electricity demand crowds out a national renewables target is on two different rungs at once — and saying so is the analysis.
Exhibit 6.4
Including the Golden Rule and the Front Page / Social Media test — see the exhibit for the full five
Case 02 makes this concrete. The Front Page test is normally hypothetical. In the Apple Card case it actually ran — the complaint went viral before the regulator looked at anything. So ask the harder version: would the decisions that failed the real front-page test also have failed it in advance, and if so, why did nobody run it before launch?
Exhibit 6.5
The explain-don’t-judge exhibit — Q5 in every case
Where the decision-maker sits on Kohlberg’s ladder (Exhibit 6.6).
Values, ego strength, locus of control.
Goal pressure, performance measurement, reward systems, how far authority sits from consequence.
Shared values and tolerance of risk; what gets praised and what gets quietly ignored.
The six factors of Exhibit 6.7 — the issue’s own properties, not the person’s.
The question that earns marks. Not “were they bad people?” but how does a careful organisation do this? Name the structural variable that made the outcome likely and say what would have had to be different.
Exhibit 6.6
Three levels, six stages — the most easily abused exhibit in the chapter
| Level | Right and wrong are defined by… |
|---|---|
| Preconventional | Personal consequences — punishment, reward, self-interest. |
| Conventional | The expectations of others and the maintenance of conventional order: living up to a role, obeying the law. |
| Principled | Values the individual defines apart from the authority of the groups they belong to. |
“The reasoning given in this public statement is conventional: it appeals to what the law required and what customers expected.”
“The CEO is at stage two.” You have never met the CEO. You have a press release.
Rule. Quote the reasoning, then locate it. Never the other way round.
Exhibit 6.7
The most productive framework in the bank
How much damage, to how many?
Do people agree that it is wrong?
How likely is the harm to occur?
How soon are the effects felt?
How close are they to the decision-maker?
Severe for a few, or slight for many?
The finding that organises four of the five cases. Issue intensity predicts how loudly an organisation will be forced to respond — not how much harm it did. In Case 02 every factor scores low and the reaction was enormous. In Case 04 the harm is severe, immediate and probable, and the response took years. Score the factors, compare with the reaction, and explain the gap.
Codes and commitments
Documents are evidence of intention, not of conduct
A formal statement of an organisation’s primary values and the ethical rules it expects employees to follow.
Effective only alongside leadership that models it, selection that screens for it, goals that do not contradict it, training, visible appraisal, and a protected channel for raising problems.
Ten voluntary principles across human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption, signed by companies as a public commitment.
Used in Case 05: the environmental principles give you a yardstick that is independent of the company’s own sustainability report.
Two questions to ask of any code you cite. Could the person who made this decision reach the document? Is there anything in the record showing it changed what they did? If the answer to both is no, say so — that is a finding, not a gap in your research.
Requirement (2)
15 points — and the easiest place in the report to be lazy
The map printed in the case is a starting point. Reproducing it with minor edits is explicitly listed as weak work.
Who can affect the organisation is a different list from who has a moral claim on it. Say which list each group is on.
The customers who never complained. The front-line staff. The people harmed next year. Silence is not absence.
Why it matters for your recommendation. A group with a strong claim and no power is precisely the group a recommendation has to protect deliberately — nobody else will be pressing their case.
Design of the bank
The cases were not chosen independently
DAO fork: a community holding no formal authority rewrote the ledger and made it stick.
OpenAI board: a board holding complete formal authority removed a CEO and reversed within days.
Together they separate authority on paper from power in fact.
Apple Card: measured intensity low on every factor, reaction enormous.
Tesla FSD: harm severe, immediate and probable; organisational response slow.
The pair shows that Exhibit 6.7 measures perception pressure, not harm.
Case 05 stands alone as the green-management case — the only one where Exhibit 6.3 is the central instrument and the firm is not the decision-maker.
Rubric, weak column
Each one is a named, avoidable loss of marks
| The mistake | The fix |
|---|---|
| Framework named but not applied | Every framework you name must produce a verdict about a specific decision. |
| Moral verdict substituted for analysis | The verdict is the last line, not the method. |
| Exhibit applied to “the company” | Apply it to a dated decision by a named actor. |
| Every ethics test agrees | If they all agree, you chose a decision that was never hard. |
| Stakeholder exhibit reproduced | Add groups, separate power from legitimacy, locate the silent. |
| Recommendation with no costs | Name what your recommendation costs and who pays it. |
Closing
Five habits, in the order a reader meets them
Chapter 6 exhibits used in this deck: 6.1 arguments for and against social involvement · 6.2 responsibility vs. responsiveness · 6.3 shades of green · 6.4 ethics tests · 6.5 determinants of ethical behaviour · 6.6 Kohlberg’s stages · 6.7 issue intensity · codes of ethics and the UN Global Compact. Exhibit numbering follows Robbins & Coulter, Management, 15th edition, Global Edition.