Professional Responsibility | SCHEDULE

Coordinating Faculty:
Jonathan Haidt (jhaidt@stern.nyu.edu) 
Bruce Buchanan (bbuchana@stern.nyu.edu)

Course Administration:
PResponsibility@stern.nyu.edu

Objectives

In this course, you will explore concepts and methods designed to make you a more effective and honorable professional. Your time in this course will be well invested if:

• You learn about the types of traps that lure business professionals into ethical lapses and even criminal behaviors; these can ruin careers, destroy companies, and bring shame to families, associates, and the business community.
• You learn enough moral psychology to understand how even well intentioned professionals can get lured into such traps.
• You develop a greater understanding of your own values and motives, which can help you avoid ethically ineffective or destructive professional choices.
• You learn conceptual frameworks and methods that permit you to navigate ethical grey zones with more confidence and better results.
• You learn basic principles for designing companies or teams that are effective and less prone ethical lapses.
• You commit yourself to a standard of professional conduct that will help to make your work in life more fulfilling and honorable.

Course Structure

The course comprises a blend of plenary and breakout sessions. The plenaries - lectures, visiting speakers, a movie screening – are designed to provide examples, concepts and context for student discussions and analyses. The breakout sections, which consist of roughly 40 students and a professor and meet for 10 sessions across the week, are where most of the work of the class will be done. Here students analyze and debate real-life cases illustrating a broad range of ethical and legal challenges facing business professionals. The course concludes with a reception and celebration at the New York Public Library on the evening of Feb. 1.

Attendance

This course is intensive and experiential. Class sessions, where you present your views and hear those of classmates, faculty, and distinguished visitors, are critically important. For this reason, attendance at all sessions and events is mandatory.

Moreover, to show proper respect for classmates and colleagues when speaking, no computers, tablets, or other devices with screens can be used during class sessions.

Grading

Because of the critical importance of classroom discussion, the components of the final grade in this course are weighted as follows:

Class Participation 50%
Written/Online Exercises 25%
Final Paper 25%

Pre-Course Written Assignment: Due January 27th

Prior to the beginning of the class, you should write a description of your future professional self. That is, you should describe the principles, values, and methods, that will guide your professional future conduct. As part of this description, you should answer these two questions:

• What does “professional responsibility” mean to you? Are there any principles or ideals that you can state now and commit to now? Any role models you’d like to emulate?
• Suppose you were given a magical amulet, which you would carry with you for the rest of your career, to serve as a moral guide. You get to write one word, phrase, or sentence on a small piece of paper, which you then place inside the amulet. From then on, the amulet will glow when you live up to what you have written, and it will vibrate when you fail to live up to what you have written. What would you write?

Submission: This assignment should be uploaded via Blackboard to your section instructor by Sunday, January 27th.

Pre-Course Readings:

The assigned portions of the following books should be read before January 28th.
(If you will be downloading the kindle version of the assigned readings onto your computer, please download the Kindle App here first for PC and here for Apple computers )

1.) Read all of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, by Jonathan Haidt.

• E-book can be found here 

2.) Read select chapters of Predator Nation, by  Charles Ferguson

• READ: Chapters 1,2,4,5, 6 and the first half of chapter 8 Pages 240-255
• E-book can be found here

Course Schedule: All plenary sessions will take place in Paulson Auditorium unless otherwise noted. Breakout session location assignments are listed on your AIS registration page. Please check this prior to your arrival on the 28th. 

-------------------------- DAY 1: Monday January 28th-----------------------------
10:00 Breakfast in Patron's Lobby

10:30-12:00 Plenary 1: Introduction
                       Paulson Auditorium (Tisch)
                       Introduction to Professional Responsibility
                       Professor John Haidt

12:15-1:00 Lunch

1:00-2:30 Breakout Session 1: Market Failure & Professional Dilemmas

3:00-4:30 Breakout Session 2: Truth and Disclosure

4:30-6:30 Free time (dinner on your own)

6:30-8:30 Plenary 2: Inside Job (Movie Screening)
                  Rosenthal Auditorium, Kimmel Center
                  Discussion with Charles Ferguson, director of Inside Job and
                  author of Predator Nation.


------------------------ DAY 2: Tuesday January 29th ---------------------------
10:00 Breakfast in KMC Lobby

10: 30-12:00 Breakout Session 3: Gifts, Side Deals and Conflicts of Interest.

12:15-1:00 Lunch

1:00-2:30 Breakout Session 4: Discussion of Survey; Agency and Fiduciary Duty.

3:00-4:30 Breakout Session 5: Whistle Blowing and Loyalty

5:00-6:30 Plenary 3: White Collar Crime
                  Paulson Auditorium (Tisch)
                  Walter Pavlo, former Federal Prisoner

---------------------- DAY 3: Wednesday January 30th-------------------------
10:00 Breakfast in Patron's Lobby

10: 30-12:00 Plenary 4: Groups, Ethics, and Design
                        Paulson Auditorium (Tisch)
                        Groupishness and Hive Psychology.
                        Teamwork. Ethical Systems Design.
                        Professor Jon Haidt

12:15-1:00 Lunch

1:00-2:30 Breakout Session 6: Insider Trading

3:00-4:30 Breakout Session 7: Control by Law

5:00-6:30 Plenary 5: Plenary 3: Jacqueline Novogratz,
                                     CEO of Acumen Fund (See this)
                                     Paulson Auditorium (Tisch)

------------------------- DAY 4: Thursday January 31st-----------------------
1:00-2:30 Breakout Session 8: social responsibility to stakeholders

3:00-4:30 Breakout Session 9: moral standards across borders

5:00-6:30 Plenary 6: Business and Social Good
                   Paulson Auditorium (Tisch)
                   Conor Grennan, Stern MBA 2010, author of Little Princes,
                   and founder of Next Generation Nepal.

-------------------------- DAY 5: Friday February 1st------------------------
10:00 Breakfast in Patron's Lobby

10: 30-12:00 Plenary 7: The Prosecutor’s Perspective
                        Paulson Auditorium (Tisch)
                        Preet Bharara
                        U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

12:15-1:00 Lunch

1:00-2:30 Breakout Session 10: MBA Code of Conduct.

3:00-4:30 Plenary 8: Success, Honor, Happiness
                  Paulson Auditorium (Tisch)
                  Professor Jon Haidt

5:30-8:00 Closing Cocktail Reception and Banquet
                  New York Public Library
                  Celeste Bartos Room
              
*There will be no PR session on April 26, 2013 as previously indicated