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Explain the history of business ethics and stakeholder theory in America.

Ethics at work: Creating virtue at an American corporation. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press.
The first part of your reading in Daniel Terris’ book will include an overview of Lockheed Martin’s organization and will lay out the research plan that Terris used to obtain information necessary for his work. This will be followed by a general overview of the evolution of business ethics in America.

describe what you consider to be the responsibility of top leadership in a large organization with respect to reaching a balance between profits and stakeholder concerns. Please support your position by giving some examples from the text or from other sources where CEOs did a good or poor job of finding this balance.
Terris discusses the history of business ethics in America since the late 1800s with respect to anti-competitive practices, seeking unfair advantage through immoral arrangements with suppliers and public officials, failing to adhere to laws and regulations, and lack of transparency. Discuss to what extent you believe things to be better or worse in the present day for businesses in general.
, Terris discusses the ideas of Howard Bowen regarding the evolution of social responsibility of businesses. To what extent do you think his predictions held true since 1953?

Describe some of the unorthodox strategies covered by Terris during this era that made Lockheed become “…a byword for the shady practices of American multi-national corporations, and a major impetus for new legislation.

Describe some of the unorthodox strategies covered by Terris during this era that made Lockheed become “…a byword for the shady practices of American multi-national corporations, and a major impetus for new legislation…”.

2. On the issue of overseas bribes, Terris asks the questions, “Who was hurt by the [overseas bribes to secure sales of aircraft]? The competitors, of course, but what was unethical about beating out the competition that was playing by the same rules?” (p.59). What do you think about a situation where underhanded and back door deals are the way the game is played if everybody is on the same playing field? That is to say, if everybody is playing by the same shady rules, is it unethical to compete? In your reading you will note that defense contractors continued to find themselves in hot water well into the 1970s as a result of overpricing and additional charges of bribery. In the late 70s Lockheed established its first code of ethics and later the major defense contractors came to the table to level the playing field with the Defense Industry Initiative (DII), by agreeing on a set of ethical principles. This was an important turning point as was bringing Norman Augustine on board.

3. Why was the DII so important to the eventual success of Lockheed Martin’s ethics program?

4. Discuss Norman Augustine’s and Dilbert’s contribution in helping Lockheed Martin turn the corner with its ethics program.

Write a Leadership 360 degree feedback.

An organization decides that they don’t want to spend the large amount of money to use a 360-degree survey from an established vendor and instead decides to develop their own survey. An employee in the human resource department is asked to create a list of 50 questions about different areas of leadership performance. Two of the senior managers look at the questions briefly and then send out the survey as part of a 360-degree process. Once the results come in, there is no rhyme or reason to the results. For example, one top performing leader in the organization gets perfect performance scores from some employees and very negative scores from other employees. Management is not sure if the results from the survey can be trusted or not.

2. A unit in one organization is having a lot of performance issues and senior management is not sure of the reasons for this. They don’t want to fire any employees, but they do think some of the supervisors need to improve their leadership skills. The survey is sent to five employees, which includes two supervisors and three direct reports. They are told that although the survey will be anonymous, the results of each survey will be shared with all five employees; the names will be removed from each survey, and they will all be able to see the evaluation scores on each question. When senior management sees the survey results, they find that all five employees received almost perfect scores and no useful information from the surveys can be found.

Assess the role of NGOs in processes of development in Africa.

Globalisation is a highly contested subject and invites many definitions and interpretations. Economics, politics, sociology, business studies among other academic disciplines can offer insights into the globalisation process, but none alone can explain it. The approach taken by this module is that of International Political Economy (IPE). It seeks to understand globalisation as a ‘totality’; an ‘epochal shift’ within capitalism, which transforms virtually everything we do and experience. This perspective puts emphasis on the historical background of globalisation, which in economic terms is principally associated with the deregulation of international finance, a technological revolution and the transnationalisation of production processes. Such developments are complemented and facilitated by ideological, political and social changes that have taken place since the post-war era; principally through the rise of neo-liberalism and the collapse of Soviet style communism in the 1970s.

These socio-political and economic trends have served to open up the world to market forces on different scales of action: local, national and transnational. In this environment there appears to be a shift of power away from the nation-state towards an external community of international financiers, multinational corporations (MNCs) and multilateral agencies, as well as internally towards the private and third sectors within one country and their links to transnational networks. To its advocates, globalisation represents the unshackling of the logic of capitalism and market forces, their ascendancy into a supreme and inevitable world system with the state playing a very narrow economic role. To its detractors, it is capitalism in extremis, temporarily unchallenged. Its logic lies not in its existence, but in its necessary demise. Between these two poles there are many intermediate interpretations and shades of opinion.