Keystone XL Pipeline Project: An Interactive Law, Policy, and Ethics Exercise

This paper presents a challenging and interactive legal, policy, and ethics exercise for business students which engages them to explore “nonmarket” (social, political, and legal) issues related to the Keystone XL pipeline project through assigned roles as members of various interest groups, including the pipeline’s owner, TransCanada, political and environmental groups, and policy and media organizations. Students analyze strategic alternatives (with a specific legal/ policy lens) and evaluate their ethical choices (both as an individual and as part of a group) by specifically considering Pope Francis’ Encyclical on the Environment and the “four pillars of Jesuit business leadership” proposed by Chris Lowney in “Heroic Leadership” and built upon by David McCallum, James Connor, and Laura Horian in “A Leadership Education Model for Jesuit Business Schools.”