Ethics and the Future of Business | UvA 2025-2026 | Fien Dubbeldam
Session 1: Morals & Ethics
PART I: PRACTICALITIES AND COURSE STRUCTURE
This session’s literature
• Moral Machine, 2024. The Moral Machine
• Crane, A., Matten, D., Glozer, S. & Spence, L. 2019. Business ethics: managing corporate
citizenship and sustainability in the age of globalization (5th ed.). Oxford University Press.
Chapter 3 (Pages 85-135)
• Awad, E., Dsouza, S., Kim, R., Schulz, J., Henrich, J., Shariff, A., Bonnefon, J.-F. & Rahwan, I.
2018. The Moral Machine experiment. Nature, 563, 59-64.
• Ciulla, J.B. 2020. Ethics and effectiveness: the nature of good leadership. In The search for
ethics in leadership, business, and beyond (pp. 3-32). Springer.
• Talk by Professor Michael Sandel (“Why we shouldn’t trust markets with our civic life”)
Course objectives
1. Understand, evaluate, and criticize core ethical theories and models of ethical decision-making.
2. Reflect and improve their own decision-making towards value-based and stakeholder
approaches.
3. Explain and criticize leading concepts and theories within corporate responsibility and
sustainability.
4. Learn and analyze key ethics and sustainability themes within your chosen specialization.
5. Reflect and apply learned concepts and theories to social and environmental issues that
organizations face.
Course structure
1
, Ethics and the Future of Business | UvA 2025-2026 | Fien Dubbeldam
PART II: INTRODUCTION TO BUSINESS ETHICS
Theme of today: trying to reflect on our own perspectives.
Morality, ethics and ethical theory
• Morality is human’s ability to decide between what is right and what is wrong
• Ethics is the systematic study of morality
• Ethical theories are principles and rules that determine right and wrong in different situations.
• Today we focus on normative ethics, i.e. the study of how we ought to behave.
Ethics
• An ongoing discussion about morality with a very long history
• Ethics typically examines right and wrong from the perspective of a human being
(anthropocentric), instead of, for instance, nature.
• Key questions include:
o What kind of moral principles should guide our actions?
o What kind of outcomes should we aim for?
• Ethics is not just theorization of morals, but the aim is also to affect practice.
• Ethical theories can give contradictory solutions to the same problem.
o In ethics it is important to take in a pluralist approach: we want to see what different
perspectives can bring us.
• Business ethics is the study of business situations, activities, and decisions where issues of right
and wrong are addressed.
Do we need ethics when we have the law?
• In society, morality is the foundation of law
• Law and ethics are partly overlapping, nonetheless:
o Law does not cover all ethical issues (cheating on your partner)
o Not all legal issues are ethical (driving on the right side of the road)
o Law and ethics can involve contradictions (apartheid)
• The road from unethical to illegal is short and slippery.
• Companies can operate in locations with lacking legal infrastructure.
Morial orientations
2
, Ethics and the Future of Business | UvA 2025-2026 | Fien Dubbeldam
• Examples of moral orientations:
o Follow the moral guidance of your religion.
o Follow your conscience.
o Aim at your own benefit.
o Do your duty.
o Respect yourself and others.
o Do not violate human rights.
o Support the common good.
o Act with fairness and justice.
o Be a good person.
• No single moral orientation is the best; it is important to take in a pluralist point of view.
Core examples where ethical decision making is demanded
• The Moral Machine experiment: an online study where participants are presented with ethical
dilemmas. In scenarios where a self-driving car cannot avoid a crash, they must decide which
individuals or animals crossing the street should be sacrificed, in order to achieve what they
consider the fairest outcome.
o Outcomes: There is variance in agreement across different dimensions, but sparing
humans instead of pets, sparing more characters instead of fewer, and sparing the young
instead of the old tend to receive more agreement.The trolley problem: a classic ethical
thought experiment presenting a scenario where a runaway trolley is about to kill five
people, and you can pull a lever to divert it onto another track, saving the five but killing
one person on that track.
o It forces a choice between inaction, leading to five deaths, and action, leading to one
death, and highlights the conflict between saving the most lives and avoiding direct
responsibility for causing harm.
o The dilemma is used to explore different ethical principles.
PART III: NORMATIVE ETHICAL THEORIES
Principles vs. outcomes
3
, Ethics and the Future of Business | UvA 2025-2026 | Fien Dubbeldam
• Principles-based ethics (left side) focuses on the rules, duties, and rights that guide our actions,
regardless of the consequences.
o The question is: What is the right thing to do based on moral principles?
o Two examples mentioned:
▪ Ethics of duties (deontology, Kantian ethics): You must follow moral duties
(e.g., "Do not lie"), even if the outcome isn't the best.
▪ Rights and justice: People have rights that must not be violated, and
fairness/justice should be respected.
o Here, morality is judged by the intention and principles behind the action.
• Outcomes-based ethics (right side) focuses on the consequences of actions: an action is moral if
it produces the best outcome.
o The question is: What action leads to the best results?
o Two examples mentioned:
▪ Ethical egoism: An action is moral if it benefits yourself (the individual).
▪ Utilitarianism: An action is moral if it maximizes happiness or well-being for the
greatest number of people.
o Here, morality is judged by the results of the action.
4
Session 1: Morals & Ethics
PART I: PRACTICALITIES AND COURSE STRUCTURE
This session’s literature
• Moral Machine, 2024. The Moral Machine
• Crane, A., Matten, D., Glozer, S. & Spence, L. 2019. Business ethics: managing corporate
citizenship and sustainability in the age of globalization (5th ed.). Oxford University Press.
Chapter 3 (Pages 85-135)
• Awad, E., Dsouza, S., Kim, R., Schulz, J., Henrich, J., Shariff, A., Bonnefon, J.-F. & Rahwan, I.
2018. The Moral Machine experiment. Nature, 563, 59-64.
• Ciulla, J.B. 2020. Ethics and effectiveness: the nature of good leadership. In The search for
ethics in leadership, business, and beyond (pp. 3-32). Springer.
• Talk by Professor Michael Sandel (“Why we shouldn’t trust markets with our civic life”)
Course objectives
1. Understand, evaluate, and criticize core ethical theories and models of ethical decision-making.
2. Reflect and improve their own decision-making towards value-based and stakeholder
approaches.
3. Explain and criticize leading concepts and theories within corporate responsibility and
sustainability.
4. Learn and analyze key ethics and sustainability themes within your chosen specialization.
5. Reflect and apply learned concepts and theories to social and environmental issues that
organizations face.
Course structure
1
, Ethics and the Future of Business | UvA 2025-2026 | Fien Dubbeldam
PART II: INTRODUCTION TO BUSINESS ETHICS
Theme of today: trying to reflect on our own perspectives.
Morality, ethics and ethical theory
• Morality is human’s ability to decide between what is right and what is wrong
• Ethics is the systematic study of morality
• Ethical theories are principles and rules that determine right and wrong in different situations.
• Today we focus on normative ethics, i.e. the study of how we ought to behave.
Ethics
• An ongoing discussion about morality with a very long history
• Ethics typically examines right and wrong from the perspective of a human being
(anthropocentric), instead of, for instance, nature.
• Key questions include:
o What kind of moral principles should guide our actions?
o What kind of outcomes should we aim for?
• Ethics is not just theorization of morals, but the aim is also to affect practice.
• Ethical theories can give contradictory solutions to the same problem.
o In ethics it is important to take in a pluralist approach: we want to see what different
perspectives can bring us.
• Business ethics is the study of business situations, activities, and decisions where issues of right
and wrong are addressed.
Do we need ethics when we have the law?
• In society, morality is the foundation of law
• Law and ethics are partly overlapping, nonetheless:
o Law does not cover all ethical issues (cheating on your partner)
o Not all legal issues are ethical (driving on the right side of the road)
o Law and ethics can involve contradictions (apartheid)
• The road from unethical to illegal is short and slippery.
• Companies can operate in locations with lacking legal infrastructure.
Morial orientations
2
, Ethics and the Future of Business | UvA 2025-2026 | Fien Dubbeldam
• Examples of moral orientations:
o Follow the moral guidance of your religion.
o Follow your conscience.
o Aim at your own benefit.
o Do your duty.
o Respect yourself and others.
o Do not violate human rights.
o Support the common good.
o Act with fairness and justice.
o Be a good person.
• No single moral orientation is the best; it is important to take in a pluralist point of view.
Core examples where ethical decision making is demanded
• The Moral Machine experiment: an online study where participants are presented with ethical
dilemmas. In scenarios where a self-driving car cannot avoid a crash, they must decide which
individuals or animals crossing the street should be sacrificed, in order to achieve what they
consider the fairest outcome.
o Outcomes: There is variance in agreement across different dimensions, but sparing
humans instead of pets, sparing more characters instead of fewer, and sparing the young
instead of the old tend to receive more agreement.The trolley problem: a classic ethical
thought experiment presenting a scenario where a runaway trolley is about to kill five
people, and you can pull a lever to divert it onto another track, saving the five but killing
one person on that track.
o It forces a choice between inaction, leading to five deaths, and action, leading to one
death, and highlights the conflict between saving the most lives and avoiding direct
responsibility for causing harm.
o The dilemma is used to explore different ethical principles.
PART III: NORMATIVE ETHICAL THEORIES
Principles vs. outcomes
3
, Ethics and the Future of Business | UvA 2025-2026 | Fien Dubbeldam
• Principles-based ethics (left side) focuses on the rules, duties, and rights that guide our actions,
regardless of the consequences.
o The question is: What is the right thing to do based on moral principles?
o Two examples mentioned:
▪ Ethics of duties (deontology, Kantian ethics): You must follow moral duties
(e.g., "Do not lie"), even if the outcome isn't the best.
▪ Rights and justice: People have rights that must not be violated, and
fairness/justice should be respected.
o Here, morality is judged by the intention and principles behind the action.
• Outcomes-based ethics (right side) focuses on the consequences of actions: an action is moral if
it produces the best outcome.
o The question is: What action leads to the best results?
o Two examples mentioned:
▪ Ethical egoism: An action is moral if it benefits yourself (the individual).
▪ Utilitarianism: An action is moral if it maximizes happiness or well-being for the
greatest number of people.
o Here, morality is judged by the results of the action.
4
