The University of Lausanne is offering free online courses on Unethical Decision Making in Organizations. The course is open for interested layperson as well as experts who work on related topics, be it as researchers or practitioners (e.g., compliance managers in corporations).
The goal of this course is to empower the participants to analyze the risks of unethical or illegal behavior that might be triggered by powerful contexts. The course will start on May 28, 2018.
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( votes)Course At Glance
Length: 7 weeks of study
Effort: 3-5 hours/week
Subject: Psychology
Institution: University of Lausanne and Coursera
Languages: English
Price: Free
Certificate Available: Yes
Session: Course starts on May 28, 2018
Providers’ Details
The University of Lausanne is a Swiss state university founded in 1537. It is focused on Medicine, Life Sciences, Geosciences, Environmental Sciences, Business, Humanities, Social Sciences and Sport Sciences. UNIL is a research-intensive university which encourages interdisciplinarity. It is also renowned for its innovative teaching methods.
About This Course
This course ‘Unethical decision making in organizations : A seminar on the dark side of the force’ will teach you how strong organizational contexts push good people towards unethical decisions. You will also learn how to protect yourself and your organization against such forces lurking in the dark.
Why Take This Course?
This course teaches how narrow frames and strong contexts can push good people towards unethical decisions and how they can protect themselves and their organization against ethical blindness.
The goal of this course is to empower the participants to analyze the risks of unethical or illegal behavior that might be triggered by powerful contexts. It draws from various disciplines such as management, psychology, sociology, philosophy, and literature, in order to learn what these disciplines contribute to a better understanding of unethical behavior. The course also analyzes some of the most prominent organizational scandals of the recent decades through the lenses of these disciplines.
Whenever we hear about ethical scandals, we tend to believe that unethical or illegal behaviour in organizations is driven by character deficiencies of individual actors. Put differently, we simply assume that bad things are done by bad people. However, numerous corporate scandals have demonstrated that even people with a high level of integrity can break the rules if they are put into a strong context.
A better understanding of why and under what conditions good people make bad ethical decisions will enable us to better protect individuals as well as their respective organizations against the potentially overwhelming power of the context. It will also enable us to cure societies from problems like corruption.
Learning Outcomes
At the end of the course, you are able to:
- Explain the impact of social context on individual decision making using various theories (from Management, Sociology, Psychology, and Philosophy)
- Apply these theories to the analysis of some of the most eminent organizational scandals of the recent decades
- Assess risks of ethical blindness in your own organizational context
- Design interventions to reduce such risks for yourself and your organization
Requirements
The course is open for interested layperson as well as experts who work on related topics, be it as researchers or practitioners (e.g., compliance managers in corporations).
Instructors
Guido Palazzo, Professor of Business Ethics
Faculty of Business and Economics (HEC-Lausanne)
Ulrich Hoffrage, Professor of Decision Theory
Faculty of Business and Economics (HEC-Lausanne)
How To Join This Course
- Go to the course website link
- Sign Up At Coursera
- Select a course and Join
