Literature, Ethics and Authority
MIT's Sloan School of Management examines the ethics of leadership not through business case studies but through works of literature that dramatize the pressures of decision-making. Readings draw on Shakespeare, Sophocles, Shaw, E.M. Forster, Joseph Conrad, George Orwell, Dostoevsky, and Ibsen, using their portrayals of command, betrayal, and moral compromise to probe where executive authority gets its legitimacy. Sessions address the sources of authority, the management of consensus, the idea of vocation, the ethics of deception, the morality of expediency, the demands of hierarchy, and the virtues and vices of loyalty, including how principles hold up in extreme situations. The course is delivered as MIT OpenCourseWare, with the syllabus and reading list freely available online at no cost, though it carries no certificate. It suits anyone interested in leadership ethics approached through literary analysis rather than the standard business school case method.