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Modern businesses are required to work within both legal and ethical frameworks to meet their mission and purpose. These frameworks impact decision making, and both constrain and guide the behaviours of all stakeholders. This course introduces you to the foundation principles of Australian business law and application of ethics principles to enable ethical decision-making. The interrelationships between these concepts are important in professional practice and for business success. The application of ethics in the context of legal decision making when engaging in contract development and negotiation, reduction of legal compliance risk, including negligence risk, and other business interactions in a company law context will highlight to you how businesses can move beyond mere legal compliance. Understanding how the principles of ethical decision-making differ in global contexts will also prepare you to anticipate and prepare for their entry into more complex work environments. This course is a required technical and profession competency component of CPA and CAANZ accreditation and specifically addresses Technical Competency Areas 4 & 11.

You are introduced to the relationship between the law and ethics and the legal environment for business decision making. This introduces the sources of law, court hierarchies and the role of precedent, and the conduct of civil and criminal actions. It examines important ethics categories (consequentialism and normative) and their impact on behaviour within a global business context. Key areas of law covered include the formation and interpretation of a contract, enforcement of contracts, with agency included with the contract since it essentially is a contractually based relationship which emphasizes the importance of an agent meeting ethical standards that inform and help to meet their fiduciary obligation under the law; key areas of the tort of negligence and the link to ethical decision making with particular emphasis on the duty of care and when this is breached and also looking at causation which examines the link between an act which can give rise to legal liability; key principles of company law relevant to professional environments such as for accountants, including the concept of the company as a separate legal entity, corporate contracting, directors duties, members remedies and the link between these areas and ethical decision making in a global business context. The course also looks at data protection and privacy regulation and storing and using data in a global business context, and the ethical issues arising from data storage and use. You will address legal and ethical dilemmas and problem-based questions to encourage independent thinking bringing all of these areas of the law into a practical context.

On completion of this course students should be able to:

1. discuss the relationship between law and ethics and the role that ethical decision making has on legal compliance (PCA04 LO1, LO2, LO3, LO4, LO5, LO6);
2. identify and describe the main principles of the Australian legal system and sources of law underpinning business decision making, (TCA04 LO1, LO2, TCA11 LO2);
3. identify core legal principles associated with contract, negligence and agency and related ethical issues arising in business practice, and their impact on decision making in business contexts (TCA04 LO4, PCA04 LO3 – LO6);
4. identify and explain core areas of laws and regulations governing the different forms of legal entities (particularly those relating to companies) relevant to accounting practice and related ethical issues arising from the ways organisations may be designed and structured, and their impact on decision making in business contexts (TCA04 LO3; TCA11 LO1; PCA04 LO3 – LO6);
5. explain the importance of applying ethical standards to data protection and privacy related business decisions in a global context (TCA04 LO5; PCA04 LO3 – 6).