ETHICS IN BUSINESS: a course outline Texas Business School, Dollars, Taxes*
This course lasts for one semester and is run by Professor N. Ron Buggard, author of Business Morality: A Morons Guide to an Oxymoron. The course is worth between one and three billion credits, depending on your creative input.
Week 1: An introduction to ethics
Are ethics good for business or vice versa? This lecture, with accompanying seminar and pie charts, will introduce the student to the once-fashionable notion of ethics. It will outline the main principles of ethical behaviour, from duty to obligation, to right and wrong, in all their forms. It will bypass the Kantian (European) notions of ethical action, focusing on the difference between personal ethics, boardroom ethics, golf-course ethics, and public displays of ethics in front of congressional committees.
Reading
- Deontology in the Boardroom: A Memoir by Robin Cash (founder of Cash Enterprises, the overnight phenomenon telecom company that filed for bankruptcy overnight)
- Ethics by Spinoza (a slightly less entertaining read, but worth it anyway)
Week 2: An introduction to business
What is business? And why is it so profitable? This lecture will remind students of the main principles of business, from inflating your figures, to devaluing others currency. It will ask you to invent a mock stock report, and to imagine a sham profit margin. With reference to real events, it will teach you how to avoid prosecution by either befriending the occupants of the White House, financing the occupants of the White House, or becoming the occupants of the White House.
Reading
- You Too can be a Billionaire! by The Revd Sinclair Seefive (The Church of Cryptic Accountancy)
- Drilling a Pipeline all the Way to Washington by George Bush Snr and George W. Bush
- Drilling Another Pipeline all the Way from Uzbekistan to Yemen by George Bush Snr
- Mink Coats and Me by Barbara Bush
Week 3: Cooking the books a few select recipes
Students will learn how to misappropriate funds, turn expenses into profits, shift data among spreadsheets and hide debts by filtering money through coffee machines. The seminar will encourage role play in which company accountants will also play independent auditors, and responsible, charming and celebrated Chief Executive Officers will become scheming double-crossers who defraud the honest independent investor, steal retired ladies pensions, and do more to damage their nation than bearded terrorists who live in Afghan caves.
Reading
- Accounting for Oneself by Various (an essential collection of stories, anecdotes and jokes from many of the nations best-severance-packaged Chief Executives and most abstract accountants)
- Shred Those Docs! An Eight-Day Plan by Trixie Feds
- Internal Auditing, Infernal Frauditing by Arthur Anderson
Week 4: You and the New Economy
What is the New Economy? How new is it and how economic? Did it ever exist? If so, where? And who are you? This week, the students learn some of the ins and most of the outs of the New Economy. In a special post-lecture brainstorm, those still awake are invited to give their opinions about what exactly the New Economy is, or was. The best ideas will be published as part of the definitive academic textbook, The New Economy Explained.
Reading
- Sculpted Goatees and Bursting Bubbles: the Sad Story of the dot.coms by E. Thics and I. Ripovkin
- Energy Deficient by Ken Lay
Week 5: Markets the bull, the bear and the weasel
What is the difference between a bull and a bear market? And who cares, if youre piling in the cash? This week, with reference to a series of childrens fables, you learn about the role of snorting, growling and lying in business. You are taught how to turn a bear market into a bull market, by the floating of mock companies (the weasel approach), and then, before anyone has a chance to blink, how to turn the bull market back to a bear market again, while you walk away with the hide of the bull as everyone else starves. This is known as The Business Cycle, The Food Chain, The Pecking Order, The Boom and Bust, The Swell and Sag, The Invisible Hand, The Burnt Fingers, The Neo-Liberal Model or The Big Con depending on who you read, and how you read it.
Reading
- A Load of Bull by Ian Flated-Figures (one-time King of Wall Street)
- Business Cycles: How to Avoid Peddling by Penny Farthing
Week 6: Trade insider, outsider and shake-it-all-abouter
Why do we trade? Is it natural? Is it because everyone has something we want? Is it because of scarce resources? Or is it because we are fat greedy criminals ripping off humanity and raping the natural world? This weeks multiple-choice test will be self-examined. After this, students will learn about different types of trade, from the first barter, to the last phone calls of Martha Stewart. They are presented with a list of names from their dog to the President and are asked to rank them in terms of useful insider knowledge. They are then shown how to use their knowledge to devastating effect, cashing in just before a company goes bust and Wall Street collapses, signalling the end of economic recovery for many aspirant nations around the world, and the loss of billions in personal pensions!
Reading
- Shocks and Stares: A Life on Wall Street by S.E.C. Swindler
- Insiders Inside by Various (a moving selection of prison memoirs of some of the countrys most infamous insider traders)
Week 7: The Firm and the unFirm
What is a company? What is its social and economic purpose? And how big is its office space? This week, students still with us will be taught about the variety of different companies that make up our economic landscape from the big building where grubby people clock-in at 9am, then things get made before even grubbier people clock-out and go home, to the mirrored scrapers with rock pools in their lobbies and giant rosewood board tables in which immaculately-cologned pinstripes trade on a delicate mixture of hot air and guff. Students are encouraged to toss aside the notion of product creation, in favour of product invention. They are then introduced to the complex notion of Russian Dolling, in which smaller companies exist within bigger companies, who then buy the smaller companies, claim them as expenses, and herald them as company growth.
Reading
- The Heartbeats of America: An examination of the Company in American History (17891999) by Professor Dwight A. Doorstop
- Who Shot J.R.? by Fay K. Name
- The Bitch by Joan Collins
Week 8: The white collars how to starch them
If you are going to build a corporation, you are going to need workers to fire. So said someone rich once. In this final week, students are prepared to fake their own way in the world, with a light-hearted lesson in how to manage their workforce, dress appropriately, and cite the Fifth Amendment. From the role of paper clips in billion-dollar share-hikes, to the tax(free)onomy of exercising stock options against wiping out others stock portfolios, students are primed for reporting inflated earnings. Then, with briefcases at the ready, they are flung out into the aggressive competition of the money markets, where they will use their and our contacts to move straight into a cushy executive job, perhaps one where they only turn up twice a year to scoop their earnings up into a bucket, sniggering all the way to the bank they run.
Reading
- Born to be Filed by Paul Thiutherwon
- Common Thieves: Dick Turpin and his Accountants by Evan Elpus (prominent English social historian)
Bonus lecture: Golden parachutes
For a small fee, students can benefit from this bonus lecture in which they are taught how to stitch up a golden parachute. Anyone able to sew themselves a $5billion+ parachute will automatically be given another $1billion, for good measure. Bring your needle and thread, and a thimble to avoid the inevitable pricks.
