Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility Essay examples

Ethics, ethical values, and social responsibility should all work in unison in a corporate business structure. These key traits are better defined as maintaining overall good business morals, obtaining employees who possess personal ethical values, and finally to behave ethically and with sensitivity toward social, cultural, economic and environmental issues. For a business to better ensure these quality business traits a code of ethics should be adopted by the business. In the cases of Bernie Madoff and Enron, the most well-known financial scandals in history, I feel, gave a major hand in pushing business all across America to have and enforce the code of ethics.

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.

Both key elements have an interactive relationship that helps in building profitable businesses, as well as a well-rounded community. Ethics refers to set of beliefs about right and wrong, good and bad. Therefore, Good ethical practice help build our business, as well as help our staff members to make ethical decisions. The decision of each official can affect the entire organization. Whereas, most people come from different background and culture which also plays a vital role in shaping their ethics. Business ethics involves the application of the issues in the workplace. While much unethical behavior is illegal, one important role of business ethics is to manage behavior that cannot be covered by government laws. The universal ethical standards, which involve respect, responsibility, and citizenship, are rules that apply to people and should be held high within the workplace. Social responsibility is the obligation of a business to contribute to society. The cheesecake restaurant social responsibility affects the environment, customers, investors, and our employees. (Bruning, 2014)

This paper primarily consists of a personal response to a few questions about ethics in business. Describing the meaning of ethics sets the criteria for evaluating if actions are ethical. Looking at current and future career work, the concept of ethics is applied to predict ethical challenges. Based on this coursework, and outside research, resources will be identified that may be beneficial when business ethical challenges arise. The coursework on ethics covered law, conflict of interest, accounting, environment, finance, marketing, management, reputation, and corporate social responsibility. All of these topics are corporate concerns. Some topics may present dilemmas during the course of business. The responses in this paper

As recently as a decade ago, many peoples,companies or organizations viewed ethics,social responsibility,business ethics only in terms of administrative compliance with legal standards and adherence to internal rules and regulations. Today the situation is different. Attention to them is on the rise across the world and many companies or organizations realize that in order to succeed, they must earn the respect and confidence of their customers. Like never before, corporatons are being asked, encouraged and prodded to improve their business practices to emphasize legal and ethical behavior. Companies, professional firms and individuals alike are being held increasingly accountable for their actions, as demand

In comparing and contrasting two articles which analyze and evaluate ethics in business, the impact of corporate social responsibility and ethical behavior by corporation and their managers can be understood by the public perception documented in a survey of Hawaiian residents, as well as the argument of negative value to consumers when self-interest and lack of ethics are part of an organization’s business model. The survey results in Choy’s article demonstrate the impression of a decline in corporate ethical behavior over the past twenty years. Both articles use the environment of competition to discuss the characteristics of ethical and moral behavior in the corporate realm. The recommendation based on the evaluation of information in the two articles is for business organizations to employ ethical and moral practices that include the values of society, and use traditional morality in all business dealings. The value of corporate social responsibility will be acknowledged and appreciated by consumers, and both economic and social gains can be achieved.

Nowadays, organizations have a corporate social responsibility to fulfill in the business industry. There is a variety of definitions for corporate social responsibility however; a common definition is a business integrates social and environmental concerns in their everyday business operations on a voluntary basis (Murphy, 2010). It is important that managers behave ethically and morally so other individuals will follow their guidance. A manager is responsible for fair treatment of employees, customers, and suppliers, building trustworthy relationships, and being transparent (Murphy, 2010). As a result, managers that are in executive level positions are oftentimes, most responsible for any unethical or

Business organizations are composed of different and complex relationships of people involve in the entire process. Business ethics do covers wide areas of concerns like corporate compliance, social responsibility, reputation management, fair labor practices, accurate accounting and audits and even environmental stewardship. It has something to do on how the company handles and deals with all the stakeholders involve like the clients, employees, shareholders, suppliers and the community (Business Ethics Primer, 2005). There are many responsibilities and people involve. Businesses differ from one another in how they value the dimensions of business relationship. Analytical and problem solving skills are important to resolve ethical dilemmas involve in the business.

Supervisors and officials within a company or organization need to settle on choices that have moral ramifications. Furthermore, those choices affect their organizations, organization shareholders, and the various partners at hand. Leading business in an ethical and efficient way keeps business on the rise and everyone that has to do with the organization in accordance with the organizational goals (Corey, Corey, Corey & Callahan, 2014). It is critical to comprehend what ethical obligations are able to live up to the organization's desires and model fitting conduct for others without discriminating others or conflicting with any other

Ethical issues are a significant area for companies doing business deals on a daily basis. In today’s high tech and the ultra-competitive business world, unfortunately, ethical conduct is often ignored. Many huge companies like Enron, Arthur Anderson, AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as well as Bank of America, are crushed, or seriously damaged with the lack of ethics compass in place. Organization ethics is the guidelines and principles by which businesses operate; “the principles and values of each person in a business” will have “a direct influence on the company’s success” (Renshaw, Kubat & Angellotto, 2013, p. 11).

Business Ethics can be defined as the study and evaluation of decision making by businesses according to moral concepts and judgments. Ethical issues range from a company’s obligation to be honest with its customers to a company’s responsibility to preserve the environment and protect employee rights. Ethics includes the need to produce a reasonable profit for the company’s shareholders with honesty in business practices, safety in the workplace, and larger environmental and social issues. Business ethics calls for an awareness of social responsibility and this includes addressing social problems such as poverty, crime, environmental protection, equal rights, public health, and improving education.

Ethics are a collection of principles of right conduct that shape the decisions people or organizations make.

Individuals are driven by a sense of morality, the differentiation of intentions, decisions and actions that are determined to be either proper (moral) or improper (immoral) (Morality, 2016). These moral codes or codes of conduct are derived by a person or group’s particular philosophy, religion or culture. It can also be a set of principles that a person or group believes should be universal. (Morality, 2016). Companies (as well as individuals) face the ethical challenge of how to engage and manage behavior that is deemed ethical; honest, fair and considered “good” for all stakeholders. For the individual, there is an element of self-management, understanding social and business norms and cultural differences. In terms of organizations, it is establishing and enforcing codes of conduct, training employees to meet ethical behavior and decision making and constructing working environments that promote ethical behavior and outcomes to the benefit and reputation of the company. To understand this quandary more clearly, it is important to understand the characteristics and motivations that lead to poor ethical choices and identify the potential solutions to mitigating those deficiencies, then evaluate these principles against a real-world example and determine what possible alternatives may exist to improve the environment, actions and decisions individuals, at various levels, may have contributed to a corporate ethical problem.

Ethics describes combination of values that guide the behavior and conduct of persons or entities. It facilitates them to distinguish between wrong and right, good and bad, what can be or should be done and what cannot and should not be done. Business contracts are lawfully binding. However, they are effectual with a robust ethical framework where parties observe and satisfy their contractual responsibilities. An efficient operative economy is enabled by competing for, acquiring and completing contracts ethically. In the case of engaging in unethical conduct a company may lose contracts, particularly government contracts, and waste resources in litigation while looking for damages. This article describes the strategy notion and different methodologies to the tactical use of social responsibility and ethics for the business environment and also impact to the employee

Recently, most companies realize the importance of operating ethically and reasonably regarding surrounding environments. Most companies implement new systemic implementation of ethics like ethics' committee, codes of ethics, ethics audit which review and mentor the performances of ethics programs in the organization. There are several factors influencing ethical behavior like; the person, family influences, religious values, personal standards, and personal needs (see figure 2).