Module overview
In our working lives, we engage in many, ethically-complex relationships—with employers, with colleagues and with clients and customers. This module will explore some of the distinctive ethical challenges that these relationships pose. For example, is the employer-employee relation inevitably exploitative? And is wage labour inevitably alienating? If not, when is working for a wage a fair exchange? And how is that question affected by broader questions of equal opportunity and equal reward? When is a business’ relation to its customers exploitative? For example, which ethical demands should shape how businesses advertise products and the prices they set? And are businesses simply there to facilitate their customers’ choices—however immoral they may be? When instead might an employee be obliged to make public confidential information they hold about their customers or indeed their employers—as recent cases of ‘whistleblowing’ illustrate. This module will explore some of these questions, which have widespread - global! - significance.