Applied Concept Paper: Critical Thinking Structures for Business Ethics

Critical thinking and ethical decision making are crucial for academic success as well as career success. Both critical thinking and ethical choices allow an appreciation of diverse points of view using analytic approaches, create a tolerance for and an appreciation of ambiguity, allow for creative problem-solving, and give the ability to integrate knowledge from diverse viewpoints into unified ideas and strategies. To better understand how critical thinking and ethics impacts our success, we must analyze these skills and how they relate to us academically, and to our future careers.

Patagonia determines how its possible ventures will be both business practical and environmentally friendly by turning their company into a eco friendly environment. It clearly states this in their mission statement. “ Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis” Their main focus is going “green” to help the environment but also using business as a

Because corporations are established to profit and shareholders invest money with expectations of a greater return, managers cannot be given a directive to be “socially responsible” without providing specific criteria of checks and balances to which needs to adhere. Therefore, it is imperative to the success of a corporation for managers to not act solely but rather to act within the policies of the shareholders.

This essay will analyse the strengths, limitations and challenges of ethical and socially responsible business practice. The purpose of this essay is to identify the advantages and limitations of following business ethics and act socially responsible in business operations. In order to help me analyse those further I will use the case study from food industry - McDonald’s corporation.

Many believe that business entities should have an ethical duty to be socially responsible, to work towards increasing its positive effects on society while decreasing its negative effects. Many organizations look for opportunities to be socially responsible while also creating shareholder wealth.

When an organization partakes in “proactive behavior…for the benefit of society,” it is deemed as socially responsible (P. 155). However, prior to labeling a organization as socially responsible, it is important that we first identify what specific elements of proactive behavior constitute a socially responsible business. To begin, for an organization to be considered socially responsible on the highest level, it must take a proactive approach to doing business. This is defined as “[taking a] approach to social responsibility in which an organization goes beyond industry norms to solve and prevent problems” (P.155). In addition, it is standard for a socially responsible organization to incorporate a larger scope of stakeholders, to include external stakeholders, in their business decisions to create positive externalities, and mitigate negative ones, to benefit society as a whole.

Business organizations today are socially and ethically responsible for doing the right thing, exercising good judgment in their business activities with employees, stakeholders, customers and the community. Business organizations emphasis should not only be on profits, but also on how business decisions impact society.

Our ethical beliefs can affect our critical thinking, which should be used on a regular basis to help us grow both personally and professionally. And as we progress through our different professional fields we must not lose sight of our ethical responsibilities but this does not need to be at odds with critical thinking which is defined as; “disciplined thinking that is clear, rational, open-minded, and informed by evidence”. With a definition like that it is clear that critical thinking can be very useful resource in our professional life. Now when you add the definition of ethics which is “that branch of philosophy dealing with values relating to human conduct, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of certain actions and to the goodness and badness of the motives and ends of such actions” you can see how the two may conflict.

1. When asked the vast majority of people will agree with the following two statements. Would you agree with them also?

However, today, the focus on stakeholder’s (apart from the shareholders, these are customers, suppliers and employees) expectations has also grown radically. Accordingly, ethical behaviours such as meeting stakeholders’ expectation objectives, environmental objectives and corporate social responsibility, which is accountability to the society and social responsibility, have resultantly become very important. Failure to comply with ethical behaviours can causes a business to damage its brand value and its reputation, which in turn could lead to reduced profits or even losses (Carroll and Buchholtz, 2014).

Factors such as economics, global, politics, socio-cultural, technology, and demographics may affect the performance of the company (Anderson, 2012).According to Patagonia, their love for the environment runs deep. They actively donate at least 1% of their sales to hundreds of grassroots environmental groups all over the world who work to help reverse the tide (Patagonia, n.d.). Additionally, by being in touch with their core values for over 40 years, they understand that some of their business activities such as lighting the stores to the dying of their products increase pollution. As a result, Patagonia works steadily to reduce those harms, by using recycled polyester and only organic rather than pesticide infected cotton (Patagonia, n.d). Considering this, the connection is created between the company and the external environment factors. These factors trickle down to the consumer who buys the product. The socio-cultural component is expressed throughout Patagonia. The socio-cultural component is concerned with societal and cultural factors such as values, attitudes, trends, traditions, lifestyles, beliefs, tastes, and patterns of behavior (Anderson, n.d). By Patagonia strategically managing all the aspects of creating an excellent corporation, it has always been their social responsibility to not only impact the consumers but corporations around them as well. Their mission will always be to change the relationship between the consumer and the products sold to them by creating clothing items that can withstand wear and tear for

In a literal sense critical thinking involves using precious knowledge as well as personal opinions derived from said knowledge to create a solution to a present problem. The definition of critical thinking goes further than what you learned through primary school and onto a higher education, the analysis has many components and many derivatives through feelings, impressions, and personal judgements.

Patagonia Case Study “Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.” Since being founded in 1973 by outdoor enthusiast Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia has gone to great measures to follow their mission statement and build a brand based on quality, trust, sustainable practices, innovation, and loyalty. By becoming a pioneer of using organic cottons in its product lines and using environmentally sustainable processes to make its products, Patagonia has managed to appeal to a certain yet growing consumer base. The consumers are men and women between the ages of 18-40 primarily in North America (West Coast and North East) who are active, outdoor nature lovers, and are supporters of sustainable and environmentally friendly practices. In addition, they are the ones who try to live a healthy lifestyle by eating organic products and attempt to reduce their environmental impact by

A key issue facing management was balancing the company’s desire for environmentalism with its existence as a for-profit business. The idea of running a for-profit business implies operating at the lowest cost, growing as rapidly as financially feasible, and maximizing returns to financial stockholders ( I think it should be stockholder since it is financial return). A commitment to the environment can raise costs and hurt margins because environmentally-friendly policies are not the most financially savvy. This issue is important because Patagonia’s entire brand and

This research is compiled to explain how good ethical practices and good values in business can yield sustainability within the business and the society as a whole and in order to do this the concept of ethical business practice and values have to be understood.