• Identify and compare different ethical perspectives in business
• Explore the competitive dynamics of digital businesses and the ethical dilemmas they create
• Analyze the internal and external factors that shape the decisions digital businesses make on ethical questions
• Apply relevant ethical perspectives to emerging challenges in digital business
• Generate management-relevant insights into the ethical dilemmas faced by digital businesses using the frameworks and theories presented in the required reading

Digital formats have allowed companies like Apple, Amazon, and Alibaba to scale quickly and expand globally, making them some of the largest companies in the world. These rapidly growing businesses have changed the way people live, work, and interact with the world around them. As these businesses grow, they present new ethical dilemmas for entrepreneurs, managers, regulators, and consumers. This course provides students with an opportunity to consider why digital businesses present new ethical dilemmas and explore how managers and entrepreneurs can apply business ethics to emerging dilemmas in digital business management. Students will have the opportunity to explore the ethical dilemmas around issues like artificial intelligence, speech on digital platforms, regulating gig workers, winner-take-all markets, big data, and gender disparities in Silicon Valley. Students in Apple, Amazon, Alibaba will explore digital and platform businesses, ethical decision-making in management, and the social issues that emerge as the influence of digital businesses grows.

This course explores how perspectives from business ethics including virtue ethics, deontology, utilitarianism, and deconstruction can provide insight into ethical behavior. The class explores the extent to which ethical principles ought to vary in digital and global contexts. While the course does not provide a prescriptive guide to ethical behavior, it introduces students to a set of frameworks they can apply to the practical ethical dilemmas they will face as they engage with digital businesses in the future.

Using the Harvard Business School case study method, students will discuss real-life ethical dilemmas for businesses, identify and weigh the relevant information, and present options for the future. By the end of the class, students will be able to analyze the ethical dilemmas created by digital businesses and present informed assessments of the potential impact of management decisions on relevant stakeholders. Apple, Amazon, Alibaba explores issues around regulation, community management, and quality control that managers of digital businesses must take seriously.

• Harvard Business School case studies (to be downloaded.)
• Aristotle (1984) ‘Eudemian Ethics’ and Nicomachean Ethics’ in Jonathon Barnes (ed.) Complete Works of Aristotle (vol. 2). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Bentham, J. (1789/2001) ‘An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation in Selected Writings on Utilitarianism. Ware: Wordsworth.
• Eisenmann, T., Parker, G., & Van Alstyne, M. W. (2006). Strategies for Two-Sided Markets. Harvard Business Review, 84(10), 92.
• Evans, D. S. (2012). Governing Bad Behavior by Users of Multi-Sided Platforms. Berkeley Technology Law Journal, 27(2), 1201–1250.
• Frederick, Robert E. (1999). A Companion to Business Ethics. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
• Hsieh, N. (2017). The Responsibilities and Role of Business in Relation to Society: Back to Basics? Business Ethics Quarterly, 27(2), 293–314.
• Jones, C., Parker, M., & Bos, R. ten. (2005). For Business Ethics. Routledge
• Kant, I. (1785/1996) ‘Groundwork of the metaphysics of morals’ in Practical Philosophy (Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant), trans. Mary Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Mill, J. S. (1863) Utilitarianism. London: Parker, Son, and Bourn.
• Schumpeter, J. A. (1976 [1943]). Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. 5 ed. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
• Solomon, R. C. (2003). Victims of Circumstances? A Defense of Virtue Ethics in Business. Business Ethics Quarterly, 13(1), 43–62.
• Srnicek, N. (2017). Platform Capitalism. John Wiley & Sons.
• Zhu, F., & Iansiti, M. (2019). Why Some Platforms Thrives... and Others Don't: What Alibaba, Tencent, and Uber Teach us about Networks that Flourish. The Five Characteristics that make the Difference. Harvard Business Review, 97(1), 118-125.