social ethics questions

6/2/22, 5:54 AM Week 7 Overview - Corporations: UCOR 2910 02 22SQ Ethical Reasoning in Business

https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/pages/week-7-overview-corporations?module_item_id=17540448 1/2

Week 7 Overview - Corporations

This week we are focusing more directly on what has become the most powerful entity within our capitalist world: the corporation. We will look at how the capitalist corporation has traditionally been organized. We'll notice that these corporate entities that control power in today's socioeconomic reality do so according to the position of shareholders who are often far removed from the community of actual producers -- how did we get to this point? Remember that Aristotle claimed economic production and exchange should naturally serve the ends of meeting the real human needs of the community. Is the shareholder structure of the modern corporation the result of capitalist production no longer serving a common good but only the ends of maximizing private profit? Is ethical reasoning even possible within an organization that divorces value from the community of those producing the goods in the first place? That is, can an organization be ethical while putting unproductive board members over producers, profits over people? Are there ways to organize the corporation otherwise? These will be the guiding questions moving forward as we sort through the differing perspectives of CEOs, labor organizers, and cooperative organizations.

To read or watch: Review the material on the Launchpad page What is a Corporation? (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/pages/launchpad-what-is-the- corporation) , which includes several helpful videos explaining some of the content.

6/2/22, 5:54 AM Week 7 Overview - Corporations: UCOR 2910 02 22SQ Ethical Reasoning in Business

https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/pages/week-7-overview-corporations?module_item_id=17540448 2/2

Read Shaw, chapter 5, "Corporations" Read Marc Benioff, "We Need a New Capitalism (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/files/68034378?wrap=1) (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/files/68034378/download? download_frd=1) " and Kim Phillips-Fein, "Business Will Not Save us From Itself (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/files/68034386?wrap=1) (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/files/68034386/download? download_frd=1) " Read David Herrera,"How Can Work be Organized so that it is More Humane: A Comparison among Laborem Exercens, 'Traditional' Organizations and the Democratic Mondragon Model" (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/files/68034366/download?wrap=1)

(https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/files/68034366/download? download_frd=1)

For further study on cooperatives see Nathan Schneider, “Economic Democracy and the Billion-Dollar Co-op” (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/files/68034400/download? wrap=1) (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/files/68034400/download? download_frd=1)

To complete or submit: Complete the Reading Assignment Questions (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/assignments/7016123) assignment, which is due by Saturday at midnight Answer the Case Discussion Questions (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/discussion_topics/7964156) . Your initial post is due by Wednesday and 2 subsequent posts by Sunday.