Business Ethics with VR

Explore how to apply a variety of practical and ethical approaches through online learning and practice in VR.

Practice online Practice in VR

Course overview

Online with VR

CPD Certified

34 online lessons

Digital certificate

5 VR scenarios

2.5 hours to complete

Course outcomes

Grasp why business ethics is essential to business success

Apply the habits of business ethics to your daily life

Make well-informed decisions when faced with a moral dilemma

Recognize your own ethical and moral strengths.

Participate in crucial conversations about business ethics with colleagues

Contribute to a healthy workplace environment

Help your company exceed its bottom-line goals

Maintaining a high level of ethical standards

In this course, you’ll learn about ethics, morality, and business ethics in ways that you haven’t before. You’ll be guided to reflect on your own ethical character and moral attributes so that you can apply what you learn to both your professional and personal life.

You will experience moral dilemmas first-hand through VR simulated and embodied experiences and have the opportunity to choose what you think would be the right decision if you were faced with these dilemmas in real life.

Part One

This course is divided into two parts. In Part One, we will establish some clarity about the meanings of ethics and morality, and why the principles and practice of business ethics are so crucial for you and your team to create and maintain long-term business success.

We’ll explore in great depth the similarities between five ethical approaches we will be adopting, as well as the differences between them:

We are calling these five approaches:

Ethics as Excellence
Ethics as Responsibility
Ethics as the Greatest Happiness or Pleasure
Ethics as the Production of Good Consequences
Ethics as Empathic Care

We will then consider the practical significance of ethics and morality by considering their relation to both the legal system as well as corporate by-laws. We will examine how our individual ethical behavior relates to, fits with, and is governed by an organization’s code of ethics, as well as the establishment of protocol.

Finally, we will accentuate the importance of this formal structure and emphasize the importance of, and need for, teamwork and collaboration whenever we are faced with complex moral dilemmas in the workplace.

Part Two

In Part Two, you will have the chance to practice what you’ve learned by applying these principles to a few, complex, simulated moral dilemmas in virtual reality.

You’ll experience 5 different scenarios of common moral problems that often contribute to unhealthy workplace environments:

Harassment: Bullying in the Workplace
Sexual Harassment
Embezzlement
Misappropriation of Funds
Taking Credit for Another’s Work

In each scenario, you will have the chance to make a number of difficult decisions, and each decision you make will take you down a certain path and lead to a unique ending.

Once all of these scenarios have been completed you will be given a report of the choices you made, the reasons you gave for making them, and how your choices and reasons are similar to and representative of one or more of the five ethical approaches we explored in Part One.

Online learning, done differently

We blend online learning with VR practice for an effective and unique learning approach. At certain points throughout this Business Ethics course, you'll be prompted to experience what you've learnt in VR.

Learn online

Complete a series of videos, quizzes and case studies online - available to access at any time.

Experience in VR

Practice what you learn online in realistic VR scenarios. Deepen your understanding of ethics by being put in the situation and seeing how you react.

Improve with feedback

Receive feedback on your performance to help identify ethical areas you need to learn more about.

Course curriculum

1. Introduction

Welcome
A Tale of Ethics
What to Expect

2. Understanding Ethics

Beyond Belief and Opinion
Five Approaches to Ethical Thinking and Practice
Ethics and Morality: What are the Differences that Matter
Business Ethics: Case Study Examples

3. Ethics as Excellence

The original meaning of “ethics”
Habit, happiness and doing well
Virtue as Excellence
Two Roadblocks on the Path to Greatness

4. Ethics as Responsibility

The Need for a Strong Foundation for Ethics
Goodness as Good Will and Intent
Some Imperatives
The Categorical Imperative

5. Ethics as the Greatest Happiness

The Ethics of Epicurean Life
Is Hedonism Ethical?
The Calculus of Happiness
The Levels of Pleasure or Why Are Not all Pleasure is Pleasing

6. Ethics as the Production of Good Consequences

Principled Behavior versus the Production of Good Consequences
The Pragmatic is the Good
James on the Moral Life
Habit Formation and Experimentalism

7. Ethics as Empathic Care

What is Empathy?
A Pluralistic Account
Empathic Care
Morality and Development

8. Establishing Expectations and Expecting Exceptions

Introduction
Morality and Ethics versus Legality
Following Protocol or an Established Code of Ethics
Peer Pressure and Whistleblowing
Difficult Situations and Unique Contexts: On Making a Judgement Call
Teamwork and Collaboration

9. VR Experiences

Harassment: Bullying in the Workplace
Sexual Harassment
Embezzlement
Misappropriation of Funds
Taking Credit for Another’s Work

Your instructor

Dr. Mark Fagiano

Dr. Mark Fagiano is an internationally recognized author and scholar in the subjects of philosophy and ethics. His 2019 essay describing his unified theory of empathy was awarded the Papazian prize and was published in the International Journal for Philosophical Studies. He is currently finishing his book on empathy and will be publishing it with Bloomsbury Press.

After teaching at four different universities for the last 10 years, Dr. Fagiano launched his own education company in Los Angeles California, Elevate Ethics, which creates and distributes visceral and embodied simulations of common moral dilemmas and empathic experiences.

This Business Ethics course has been designed based on Mark’s research into neuroscience, psychology, and the history of ethics.

VR training for this course

Experience different ethical situations with VirtualSpeech, the leading VR training app used by 350,000 learners worldwide. At key points during the online course, you'll be prompted to experience what you've learnt in one of the following VR training scenarios.

Bullying

In this scenario, you will learn how to recognize the manipulative habits of bullies in the workplace.

Sexual harassment

In this VR simulation, you will have the chance to decide for yourself what constitutes sexual harassment.

Embezzlement

Here you will practice making decisions about a colleague who is embezzling money to save her dying son.

Misappropriation of funds

In this scenario, you will decide whether to follow the leaders of your committee or side with dissenters when money for a grant is being misused.

Taking credit for another's work

For this experience, you will have the opportunity to play many roles as a few colleagues try to take credit for other people's work.

350,000+

Learners in VR

4x

Faster than classroom training

6

Learning awards

"The combination of ethical VR scenarios and online classes is highly effective because you get to experience difficult situations, see how you react in a risk-free context and then learn about the strengths and weaknesses of the ethical theories that your reactions resemble. It's a chance not only to experience and practice handling difficult situations, but also to understand what sort of reasoning is behind your preferred way of handling those situations."