What you'll learn:
- Introduction to Business Law
- Sales and Contract Law
- Intellectual Property and Employment Law
- Liability and Your Responsibilities
- The Relationship Between Law and Ethics
- The Spirit and Letter of the Law
- Meeting the Spirit of the Law
- The Corporate Veil
- Individual Responsibility and the Manager
- Vicarious Liability and the Manager
Welcome to the Business Law course. This course includes 3 sections also presented as independent courses for your convenience: Business Law Basic Concepts, Business Law and Ethics, and Business Law and the Manager's Responsibilities.
Business Law Basic Concepts
The risk becomes even greater when managers aren't fully aware of the business laws that affect them and their organizations. As a manager, you serve as a leader and as a representative for your organization. Accordingly, you're responsible for being informed of the laws that govern business.
You need to comply with these laws yourself, as well as ensuring that your department and employees are aware of the law and comply with it. Failing to do this can potentially get you and your organization into a great deal of trouble.
In this section, you'll learn about the different areas of business law and what they encompass. You'll also learn about the responsibilities of managers in each of these areas. This will help equip you to protect yourself, the employees you manage, and your company.
Business Law and Ethics
As a manager, you have both legal and ethical responsibilities. Your conduct is expected to meet both the letter and the spirit of the law. Managers who bypass their ethical responsibilities risk getting themselves and their companies into deep legal trouble.
Corporate scandals have ruined both careers and companies. As a manager, you need to learn about business ethics and how to use ethics as a guiding rationale when dealing with your responsibilities. This is crucial because ethical principles provide the basis for the spirit of the law.
This section guides you in differentiating between ethics and the law, as well as in recognizing areas where the two concepts overlap. It explains the difference between following the letter of the law and following the spirit of the law. And it covers a process you can use to make ethical decisions that comply with the spirit of the law.
The course also outlines typical obstacles to ethical behavior in business, and steps managers can take to build a strong culture of ethics in their companies.
By understanding and providing ethical management, you'll help to encourage ethical behavior in your organization. This can protect you, your employees, and your company, and help attract both customers and investors. Ultimately, ethical behavior means better business.
Business Law and the Manager's Responsibilities
A corporation is a legal entity, separate and distinct from its shareholders, directors, and managers. In practice, this means that executives and managers of a corporation may be shielded from the company's liabilities by what's referred to as the corporate veil.
However, managers shouldn't trust the corporate veil to protect them legally. When they consider it necessary, the courts pierce this veil, finding individual managers legally culpable for their behavior, or even for the behavior of their employees.
So, as a manager, you need to protect yourself, the employees you manage, and your organization from becoming implicated in illegal or unethical activities, and from facing legal consequences as a result. This means you have to know and meet your responsibilities, always ensuring that your own actions are both legal and ethical.
It also means ensuring that you fulfil your managerial duties – for example, communicating clear expectations and policies to employees, and responding to reports or signs of inappropriate behavior.
In this last section, you'll learn more about the corporate veil and about the types of factors that typically cause the courts to pierce this veil. You'll learn how best to handle concerns and warnings of potentially illegal behavior.
And you'll learn how to help ensure that your communications don't expose you or your organization to legal liability. Finally, you'll learn about vicarious liability as it applies to managers, and about steps you can take to avoid this.
So, this is the broad picture. This is what you can expect from the course and you can already start. No go ahead and push that "Register Now" button and see you inside the course!
