Santa Clara University is a private non-profit Jesuit university located in Santa Clara, California. It has 5,250 full-time undergraduate students, and 3,270 graduate students.
How do we encourage candidates to campaign ethically? Voters want to vote for candidates who tell the truth, are forthright about where he or she stands on issues, independent, and doesn’t engage attack-style politics. The purpose of this course is to provide the tools to identify ethical candidates.
This course is for anyone interested in elections. Participants will receive practical advice on setting an ethical tone, ethical decision-making, ethical operations, and using campaign ethics to their advantage. Please note that this is a course on ethics and not a primer on the specific laws that regulate the political process. Upon completion, participants will receive a badge from the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics that can be used on campaign websites and other campaign communications.Public service is a noble calling. The process of getting there, however, is not always so noble. Our process for electing public officials is born out of the ethical ideal of creating an informed electorate. Regrettably, secret obligations in exchange for endorsements, scripted debates, the influence of big money, and irrelevant, deceptive, and vitriolic campaign communications leave the voter without any real information about what a candidate stands for or to whom the candidate is beholden. Voters feel disenfranchised, believing that their vote no longer matters. Citizens are also frustrated by political polarity and resultant lack of legislative productivity. The public perceives that negotiation and compromise are no longer available tools for those who govern due to obligations created during the campaign process. Moreover, unethical political attacks freely dispensed during a campaign poison later legislative relationships.Statistics for voter turnout and public trust in government are at historical lows. At the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics we believe that one of the reasons for this civic disengagement is that our political process turns a blind eye toward unethical campaign practices. We believe that encouraging ethical campaigns will decrease political polarity by reducing the rancor in political races, will restore public trust in government by ensuring fairness and integrity in campaigns, and will increase civic engagement by creating a process that not only encourages an informed and involved electorate, but encourages good people to run for office.
An overview of the role of the manager in shaping the ethics of the organization.
This course is designed to provide executives, managers, and supervisors the knowledge and tools to create and sustain an ethical culture in their company, department, or work group. Management theorists and ethics experts have increasingly concluded that this responsibility, to create and sustain the ethical organizational culture, is a fundamental task of every level of management. Course participants will learn that managers select from four basic strategies to create an ethical organization and culture, and make use of ten basic tools to shape that culture and keep it strong. The course also addresses unavoidable challenges to an ethical culture.
The development of character virtues and moral reasoning skills impact all aspects of young people's life, including academic success, mental and physical health, and social relationships. Parents, educators, counselors, tutors, and mentors can use this course.
This course is designed to provide an introduction to the subject of ethical behavior in business. The course provides an understanding of the nature of ethics, the role ethics plays in business, and the most commonly encountered ethical dilemmas in a business career. It provides practical advice on how to identify ethical dilemmas when they arise, how to get enough information to assess one’s responsibilities, how to analyze a complex ethical choice, and how to marshal one’s own resources and courage to act ethically. While the course includes some ethical theory, it is designed to be approachable by the seasoned manager, the novice businessperson, and students in business schools. No specific background or preparation is necessary.