Ethical Issues in Risk Management for Business

Business by its very nature is a risky venture. This module will help students to become sensitive to the different areas in which risk functions, the dimensions of risk, the associated ethical issues, and how business practitioners can ethically manage and communicate risk. While financial risk is important, businesses are also developing methods to identify and assess ethical and legal risks. This module expands even this broader paradigm to include risks that threaten health and safety as well as environmental values. It is currently being tested at the University of Puerto Rico in the course, "The Environment of the Organization," and has been developed as a part of a project funded by the National Science Foundation, "Collaborative Development of Ethics Across the Curriculum Resources and Sharing of Best Practices," NSF-SES-0551779. The module has the students look at a series of case studies, discusses the basic moral concepts associated with risk management, and has a series of exercises that asks students to practice managing and communicating risk information. This module is currently under development.