BUAN 5280 - Law and Ethics for Business Analytics

3 credit hours
This course will examine the opportunities and challenges introduced by business analytics through the perspectives of the law and ethics. Rapidly evolving technologies that permit the collection, storage, aggregation, analysis, and use of data create opportunities for financial benefit and the common good, but also create challenges to legal rights such as privacy, equality, and dignity, and to ethical values, such as autonomy, trust, and virtue. The course will be framed as a contextual examination of business analytics to facilitate learning about legal and ethical standards for private organizations using data analytics techniques in various stages of the data life-cycle. This is a dynamic course which presents a rich basis for student learning and contemplation of central questions for “big data”, including issues related to acquisition and use of data; professional and social responsibility in the application of modern technologies; the efficacy of management by algorithm; and the loss of human control in using artificial intelligence. The following are examples of legal and ethical issues that may be included, subject to time constraints: in law: information privacy law such as U.S. tort law, federal statutory and administrative law, and constitutional protection of civil liberties; European Union data privacy regulation; cyber-intelligence and cyber-security regulation; contractual liability, specifically with respect to third party reliance on data analysis; the law of negligence; and agency law; in ethics: adverse effects of data collection on vulnerable populations; transparency and honesty in the cleaning, processing, and visualization of data; introduction of the machine equivalent of implicit bias in feature selection; and responsibilities when using data analysis as a tool to guide human decision-making. Registration restrictions may be bypassed by the department with permission of instructor.

Registration Restriction(s): MSBA students only
Prerequisite Course(s): Business Calculus, Business Statistics, Computer Programming