DSST Business Ethics study plan

Define the core vocabulary of moral philosophy (consequentialism, deontology, virtue ethics, egoism, relativism) in your own words and give one business example of each

Distinguish utilitarian cost-benefit reasoning from rights-based and duty-based reasoning when applied to a workplace decision

Compare the shareholder-primacy and stakeholder views of the firm and state the strongest objection to each

Classify the four levels of corporate social responsibility (economic, legal, ethical, philanthropic) using three real company announcements you locate yourself

Write a 150-word argument defending one philosophical framework as the best guide for managers, including one counterargument

Outline the main categories of business regulation (antitrust, consumer protection, securities, environmental, labor) and name the kind of conduct each targets

Explain the difference between economic and social regulation and give one statute-style example of each

Trace how a government agency enforces a rule: investigation, administrative action, and judicial review

Analyze one current regulatory proposal and identify which stakeholders gain and which bear the cost

Argue both for and against the claim that regulation is usually captured by the industries it regulates

Identify the ethical and legal issues in hiring, evaluation, discipline, and termination, including discrimination and retaliation concepts

Explain at-will employment and the major exceptions to it in general terms

Distinguish privacy, confidentiality, and security as separate obligations of an employer handling employee data

Apply a decision procedure to two workplace scenarios involving monitoring, whistleblowing, or conflicts of interest

Describe the ethical duties around accuracy, ownership, and access for customer and employee information

Compare absolutist and relativist positions on bribery, gift-giving, and facilitation payments across cultures

Explain the main purposes of anti-corruption law such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention at a conceptual level

Identify the tensions between labor standards, human rights, and cost competition in global supply chains

Describe the ethical dimensions of environmental externalities, including pollution, resource depletion, and climate risk disclosure

Evaluate a sustainability report or code of conduct for specific, verifiable commitments versus vague claims

Map the claims of at least six stakeholder groups (owners, employees, customers, suppliers, communities, creditors) and rank them by moral weight with reasons

Explain the principal-agent problem and how executive compensation can create or align incentives

Distinguish corporate governance mechanisms (board independence, audit, disclosure) by the failure each is meant to prevent

Analyze the tension between short-term shareholder returns and long-term stakeholder investment using a concrete example

Draft a stakeholder salience analysis (power, legitimacy, urgency) for one company you know well

Revisit the philosophical frameworks and apply each to a regulatory and an employment dilemma to test transfer of knowledge

Build a personal decision checklist that integrates consequences, duties, virtues, and stakeholder impact

Identify the ethical failure modes most often tested: conflicts of interest, rationalization, diffusion of responsibility, and overconfidence

Practice distinguishing legal compliance from ethical adequacy in ten short scenarios

Explain how corporate ethics programs, codes, and hotlines actually change behavior, and where they fall short

Synthesize the information, international, environmental, and government domains into cross-cutting themes such as transparency and accountability

Explain how data protection expectations differ across jurisdictions at a general level and why multinationals face conflicting duties

Analyze the ethics of lobbying, political contributions, and revolving-door employment between government and industry

Argue both sides of a question where environmental protection and economic development conflict, then state and defend a position

Complete a timed 60-question mixed practice set and categorize every miss by domain

Review your weakest two domains based on the week 7 error log and rewrite those notes into one-page summaries

Rehearse the definition, one example, and one weakness for every major framework without notes

Complete a second timed practice set and compare domain accuracy against week 7

Memorize the distinctions most easily confused: CSR levels, at-will exceptions, economic versus social regulation, absolutism versus relativism

Finalize exam-day logistics and a pacing plan for the question count