Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and - more recently- Sustainable Business (SB) describe the relations between firms, understood as major economic actors, and society at large, in the light of the general principles of justice, equality, responsibility and reciprocity. This course will provide students with the analytical instruments to grasp, evaluate the implications and provide solutions to the most pressing ethical issues facing businesses. Broadly, the course aims to provide students with: • knowledge of the main theories and paradigms emerging in Business Ethics; • understanding of the ethical aspects of dilemmas and trade-offs emerging in a business; • an improved ability to make clear and informed ethical assessments to be applied to business and corporate management. Exploring how technology ethics and sustainability are now inextricably linked, especially as Big-techs must be guided by ethical principles that guarantee respect for human dignity, protection of the environment, and the promotion of an inclusive and just society. Explore how Big-techs has a crucial role to play in this process and must rise to the challenges it faces by making ethical and sustainable choices, not only for profit, but for the common good.

Knowledge and Understanding By the end of the course, students will acquire: • Better knowledge of the main theories and dilemmas emerging in the scholarly debate on CSR and Sustainable Business • Improved understanding of different approaches and competing perspectives (e.g.: stakeholder theory, the paradox of stakeholders, input-output, theories of legitimacy, environment and stakeholder view, definitions of community) • Increased capacity to engage critically with the readings and to connect normative thinking to other, empirical, strategic, legal and political perspectives of Business. • Better capacity to look at real-world business cases and dilemmas providing solutions coming from an ethically informed perspective. Applying knowledge and Understanding Students will be able to apply their acquired knowledge in their future professional activities, in several ways. In particular, students will be trained in: • Drafting and preparing Business Cases aimed at providing a better understanding of the issues involved in the business activity for corporate managers and/or CSR units • Carrying out research providing new solutions (for either academic or professional purposes) in the field of corporate social responsibility and sustainable business. • Giving public talks, working in teams, developing sustainable business models and inspire new solutions to both ethical and environmental problems emerging in business contexts. Making Judgements Due to the critical approach employed in the course and the emphasis placed on autonomous re-elaboration and critical discussion, students will be able to: • Provide informed ethical assessments of business activities. • Develop an autonomous and critical view about how business should be shaped in order to inspire new ethically, socially and environmentally responsible solutions. • Carry out different research works (both individual and in teams), which will entail the increased capacity to select relevant material, to engage critically with such material and to present independent and original solutions. • Recognize the difference (and apply when appropriate) between normative, descriptive and strategic judgements. Communication Skills During the course students will be asked to contribute to the discussion in several ways, via group presentations on specific business cases and active engagement in class discussion. Students are therefore expected to improve their communication skills and the overall degree and quality of participation in class discussions. Group discussions on ethics case studies (ranging from business ethics, corporate governance, to ethical leadership) are planned in the module 2. Learning Skills By the end of the course students are expected to acquire the following skills: • Better capacity to design, draft and autonomously carry out a business ethics case. • Improved ability to make intelligent use of informed ethical assessment to apply to Business. • Increased competence in providing well-organized and clear arguments in support of their views. • Increased expertise in the fields of Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainable Business. Students will be able to use the skills acquired in this course for both professional and academic purposes. This is confirmed by the fact that several students, who have been enrolled in this course in previous academic years, are now enrolled in MA programs in fields related to the course, or have carried out internships in the field, seeking to undertake a professional career in the field of CSR&SB.

The course provides students with the analytical instruments to understand and evaluate the most pressing issues in the contemporary debate on CSR&SB with a further focus on the ethics of technology and the role of Big-techs. The first part (week 1-6) will focus on the “stakeholder framework” from both theoretical and strategic perspectives. Since the introduction of this concept by Edward Freeman in 1984, a concern for the interests of all stakeholder groups has become a widely recognized feature of ethical management. Although the stakeholder approach has been developed in various ways, it has been expressed most often in the moral prescription that managers, in making decisions, ought to consider the interests of all stakeholders. The course will consider both the critical aspects of this theory, its recent developments and the wave of its practical applications to the business. The contents of this part will include: • Introduction to Ethics and Business • Corporate Social Responsibility: definition, core issues, and recent developments, Introduction to Sustainable Business. • Stakeholder theory • Normative approach to the stakeholder management •The paradox of the stakeholder theory • Theory of stakeholders identification and salience • Legitimacy of the stakeholders • Stakeholder community • Stakeholder theory and environment The second part of the course (weeks 7-12) will focus on the development of digital technologies and the issues this raises for CSR&SB. The central focus of this course will be the innovative approach to the ethics of technology that has characterized the business world since the 1980s, starting with Langdon Winner's considerations on whether technological artifacts have a political dimension. This way of questioning technology from the perspective of different stakeholders now characterizes the frontier of corporate responsibility in releasing technological innovations in a social context. Winner's considerations have become the prism through which to analyze the development of digital technologies and the categories with which to offer effective governance of technological innovation processes and how to build real social responsibility, a true dimension of responsibility in the large technological giants that, in the face of rapid growth, often defined as “move fast and break things,” do not seem to have experienced a true dimension of CSR&SB with numerous and serious social implications. This part of the course is characterized by a two-pronged approach: each week, we will analyze the milestones in the development that has led to the current dominance of Big Tech, and we will study the main analyses of these transformations from the perspective of technology ethics. The contents of this part will include: · The birth of technology ethics and the first examples of critical analysis of innovation · The birth and development of digitalization · The transition from mainframes to personal computers and the advent of smartphones · The birth of Web 2.0 and the development of platforms · From the dream of the internet to the dominance of the attention economy · Artificial intelligence and the ethical challenges it poses · The transition from the attention economy to the intention economy · The global race for computing and the challenges to sustainability · Attempts at continental and global governance

Main Text Books Rasche, Morsing, Moon, (eds.) 2017. Corporate Social Responsibility. Strategy, Communication and Governance. Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/highereducation/books/corporate-social-responsibility/A1B05BAB51E5DD45FDC8701A87D2878B (available via library as electronic resource). This book will be used for case studies. Further Readings: Carroll, A.B. (1999). "Corporate Social Responsibility: Evolution of a Definitional Construct." Business Society 38 (3):268-95. (http://bas.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/38/3/268). Donaldson, T., & Preston, L. (1995). The Stakeholder Theory of the Corporation: Concepts, Evidence, and Implications. The Academy of Management Review, 20(1), 65-91. doi:10.2307/258887. Phillips, Robert, R. Edward Freeman, and Andrew C. Wicks. “What Stakeholder Theory Is Not.” Business Ethics Quarterly 13, no. 4 (2003): 479–502. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3857968. Goodpaster K. (1991). “Business Ethics and Stakeholder Analysis” Business Ethics Quarterly 1, no. 1 (January 1991): 53–73. Theory of Identification Ronald K. Mitchell, Bradley R. Agle, and Donna J. Wood, 1997: Toward a Theory of Stakeholder Identification and Salience: Defining the Principle of who and What Really Counts. AMR, 22, 853–886. Stakeholder Legitimacy Phillips, R. (2003). Stakeholder Legitimacy. Business Ethics Quarterly, 13(1), 25-41. Dunham, L., Freeman, R., & Liedtka, J. (2006). Enhancing Stakeholder Practice: A Particularized Exploration of Community. Business Ethics Quarterly, 16(1), 23-42. Retrieved May 6, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3857725. Phillips, R., & Reichart, J. (2000). The Environment as a Stakeholder? A Fairness-Based Approach. Journal of Business Ethics, 23(2), 185-197 Orts, E., & Strudler, A. (2009). Putting a Stake in Stakeholder Theory. Journal of Business Ethics, 88, 605-615. Strudler, A. (2017). “What to Do with Corporate Wealth,” Journal of Political Philosophy, 25: 108-126.

The teaching methods of this course are organised around the intended learning objectives. They will include: • Lectures • Seminars in class (class discussions are organised every week) • Case studies (two cases will be studied for the mid-term written exam, other cases discussed during the first portion of seminars)

Attending Students’ Assessment The assessment for this course is seen as a process rather than one or a collection of different methods. It responds to the need to embed the overall evaluation within the learning process. Thus, a portion of the assessment will be connected to in-class activities and to the level of students’ involvement in and response to such various activities. This process will entail 3 components: • Active participation in class discussion (it will give a plus in the final evaluation) • Midterm exam – 30% of the overall grade Final exam (covering the second part of the course) – 70% of the overall grade Students not compliant with the attending rules will be assessed in a final comprehensive exam which will entail both parts of the course

Final Grade (above 28/30)