With just one week left before the start of the 2009 fall semester at UAA, I thought it might be interesting to take a look back at some of the projects that I participated in or completed during my first full year in the MBA program. I will be spreading this out over several postings this week—and in many cases embedding the final product or document into the blog posting—and hopefully it will serve as a useful glimpse into the types of projects and issues covered in the MBA program.
Business Ethics Project
A rather substantial individual assignment in my Business Environment Analysis class dealt with the creation of a specific code of business ethics. The assignment dictated that each student choose an existing, substantive system of thinking (from, say, a particular branch of philosophy, religion, or regional culture, etc.) and adapt a functioning business code of ethics from its main ideals. The code was to be detailed in a paper and challenged with two business-related ethical issues. The professor warned that this would not be an intuitive task; rather its complications were designed to force students into a more discerning understanding of the crucial role played by practical business ethics. For my starting point I chose the complicated writings of Ayn Rand, in particular her philosophy of Objectivism, which is centered on the principal that individuals should act based upon rational self-interest. I had no previous experience with Rand’s writings, but I was aware that her ideas were rather controversial and often economically associated with political conservatives defending pure free-market capitalism, perhaps because of former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan’s well-known belief in Objectivism and rational self-interest. Other than that, I knew that I had chosen a very dense system of thinking from which to distill a simple, practical code of ethics. As my professor had warned, I found the assignment to be very challenging, but rewarding in the sense that I felt like I was cracking a difficult code as I waded into Rand’s prose and sought to uncover the raw ethics that formed the underpinnings of her complex and divisive life’s work. The resulting paper is written from the theoretical perspective of a business owner and also includes a section on corporate social responsibility (pg. 25)—which I was initially skeptical of, but ultimately found to be one of the most interesting aspects of the exercise.
Ayn Rand and Business Ethics
Business Ethics Project
A rather substantial individual assignment in my Business Environment Analysis class dealt with the creation of a specific code of business ethics. The assignment dictated that each student choose an existing, substantive system of thinking (from, say, a particular branch of philosophy, religion, or regional culture, etc.) and adapt a functioning business code of ethics from its main ideals. The code was to be detailed in a paper and challenged with two business-related ethical issues. The professor warned that this would not be an intuitive task; rather its complications were designed to force students into a more discerning understanding of the crucial role played by practical business ethics. For my starting point I chose the complicated writings of Ayn Rand, in particular her philosophy of Objectivism, which is centered on the principal that individuals should act based upon rational self-interest. I had no previous experience with Rand’s writings, but I was aware that her ideas were rather controversial and often economically associated with political conservatives defending pure free-market capitalism, perhaps because of former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan’s well-known belief in Objectivism and rational self-interest. Other than that, I knew that I had chosen a very dense system of thinking from which to distill a simple, practical code of ethics. As my professor had warned, I found the assignment to be very challenging, but rewarding in the sense that I felt like I was cracking a difficult code as I waded into Rand’s prose and sought to uncover the raw ethics that formed the underpinnings of her complex and divisive life’s work. The resulting paper is written from the theoretical perspective of a business owner and also includes a section on corporate social responsibility (pg. 25)—which I was initially skeptical of, but ultimately found to be one of the most interesting aspects of the exercise.
Ayn Rand and Business Ethics
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