Business Ethics and the Role of the Corporation
The problem to be investigated is the ethical role that the corporation has when balancing internal strategies with external responsibilities. Dr. Novak explains various responsibilities a business has in his article “Business Ethics and the Role of the Corporation”.
This paper will first discuss why Dr. Novak has two sets of responsibilities in his article on business ethics. Next it will explain what Dr. Novak says about the rule of law and its relationship to business. Finally it will analyze what he means by moral ecology.
Why did Novak Have Two Sets of responsibilities for his Definition of Business? The first set of definitions included internal business strategies focused on
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According to Novak, Social Justice describes a unique balance of “laws and moral and cultural institutions”. How well a company conforms to activities that benefit these cultural institutions while abiding by the laws of society, and, at the same time, still managing to be profitable, is the key to a successful business.
Total Quality Management (2009),
Secondary stakeholders are also important because they can take action that can damage or assist the organization. Secondary stakeholders include governments (especially through regulatory agencies), unions, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), activities, political action groups, and the media.
(p. 1)
The Rule of Law and its Relationship to Business Novak states in this article, “exemplify respect for the law. Business cannot survive without the rule of the law. Long term contracts depend on their fulfillment of the law.” (Jennings, 2009) Contracts can be very long and many people do not read these documents verbatim. This is why it is imperative that there are laws that specifically protect individuals and the organizations they represent against fraud and other types of deceit. The purpose of a contract is to force individual parties involved in an agreement to abide by the original
2. Laws must be static and unyielding in order to provide stability for a society.
The author Robert Solomon argues that ethics has to an integral part with regard to business management. He does not believe that business management must include unethical or illegal methods to be able to succeed. Solomon preaches that business management is not as simple as obtaining revenue. “Businesses need to abide by fair policies and their owners have to be ethical in dealing with their customers” (Shaw p. 37). The author acknowledges that while illegal practices in business management could bring positive results at first, eventually the business is bound to fail. This is why Solomon recommended eight important policies that can help businesses in integrating ethics into their operations.
Ethics and moral obligations are issues we all encounter at one time or another. In the professional setting, all people should act in a manner that would uphold the good of society. To be ethical, one has to determine their obligations, moral ideas, and moral philosophy (Boatright, p. 19, 2009). The case analysis involving Jacob Franklin was a perfect example of how an individual can face the dilemma of doing what is right or wrong. Businesses have their own code of ethics, and the employees within the business have to determine whether or not they will follow the company’s code of conduct. I will discuss several ethical issues in the case analysis including; failure to report information, remaining silent regarding faulty equipment,
Every business develops a set of ethical principles that they abide by. The business ethical principles intentions: it construct the business certainty in the community , maintain the employees liveried in what the business attempt to have as structural conducts and aid the employees consume principles to make ethical choices that guards the business. In a culture with a diverse assessment structure and augmented judgment visibly by companies with changeable ethics and interests, there appears to be further difficulties on business individuals to make tougher ethical assessments. In our day-to-day performances, we depend on on our ethical principles to monitor us in the correct path and do the correct things. The substance of any efficacious and perpetual business is they segment a mutual ethical matter concentrating on presenting and generating value along with allocating their business values with the citizens they network with on a day-to-day basis.
Under this task I will explain the ethical issues that business needs to consider in its operating activities and how a business they could improve the ethical of their operations and also I will evaluate the influence of stakeholders exert in one company.
The concept of business ethics has tried to change the way businesses operate over the years. Business ethics is a form of ethics that governs the actions of businesses to circumvent the affects business has on every day society. But some question its effectiveness in the application of capitalism. Several case studies have shown that this is the case; many companies place the pursuit of money in front of the pursuit of virtue. Although, the majority of companies are not in the spotlight of acting unethically, can we conclude that they follow the ethical norms? It is natural for normal human beings to act ethical but businesses are on a completely different playing field. But could business ethics be clearly possible in capitalism?
Ethics are values and principles that individuals use to govern his decisions and activities. Ethics are about moral judgment of an individual about right and wrong. In an organization, code of ethics refers to set of guiding principles and organizations use these principles in their policies, programs, and decisions for business. Within organizations, decisions are taken by groups or individuals and these decisions are influenced by the culture of the company. Decision making and relevance of ethics may also differ for nonprofit and for profit organizations. In contemporary business environment, organizations must have a clear ethical policy and implement it in proper manner. There are many social, legal and economic outcomes that company has to face in case of any ethical dilemma, so there must be a smart strategy to deal with ethical dilemmas. In this paper, we will address the ethics for nonprofit and profits organizations, ethical dilemmas being faced or faced by each of these companies and the outcomes of these ethical dilemmas. Critique of actions of each of these companies will be provided from the point of view of applicable philosophical theories of organizational ethics.
Also the importance of understanding ethics in a business is away of collecting lacking information of employees involved, like power or to helping to harm the employees, customers and everyone involved in the company. One of the most positive ethic roles a company is practicing giving to charity donation each year is practicing ethical behavior. The benefit of the company can allow additional taxes, and send a positive message. Therefore, the business can bring in a lot more customer’s, and increase a positive image towards the relationship with the business to allow the firm to bring in more new employees. Also business and personal ethics is a learning experience for young and through adulthood, is a practice through our daily lives. Some business give their employees information that contain statements, policies, and other responsibilities that all employee should follow. While these effects are if the employee refuse to respect the organization by following the business guidelines.
The word ethics has many definitions depending on who you are speaking with and if it is business related. One person may tell you that ethics has to do with what is right and wrong. Another may say it has to do with that law of the land. In fact there are many interpretations and definitions for ethics. In Corporate Communications there is a totally different set of code of ethics. The standards for professional communicators are similar to each other and they also have their differences in relation to their actual profession. I am going to compare and contrast the different codes of the major
The notion of ethics deals with people’s behaviors within a company. Social responsibility involves a company’s moral obligations and the manner in which the organization makes its decisions. Although ethics and social responsibility are similar on a conceptual basis, each has its own unique characteristics that express their differences and its independence of the other. Ethics and social responsibility have to be present and coincide with one another for a business to be ethically sound.
When considering corporate American and its business crisis of integrity many people seem to cerebrate that ethics is mainly about staying out of trouble. Any explication they give concerning the role of ethics in business today will ineluctably feature a discussion of compliance, licit liability, and the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. The great cogitators of the past had a very divergent perspective. Ethics is not mainly about staying out of trouble. It’s about engendering vigor: vigor in individuals, in organizations, and in relationships with clients and suppliers.
2. Ethical Issues in Business. It seems that every day in the news we are hearing of new company that has acted at least unethically and possibly illegally in the operation and financial reporting of their company's business dealings. There are many ethical issues in business. One major issue that we see is over and under reporting net income. Companies like to show that every quarter the net income of the business has an increase or profit. In order to show this they adopt unethical or illegal means in the operation and financial reporting. One such method is the indiscriminate use of stock options for employees that enable companies to take employment costs off balance sheet and inflate earnings. With the recent ethical issues we have
The consensus among researchers is that philosophers and business people alike have long been grappling with the issue of business ethics (Barnard, 1938; Whyte, 1956; McGregor, 1960; Baumhart, 1961; McMahon, 1973; England, 1975; Powers & Vogel, 1980; Drucker, 1981; Ouchi, 1981; Peters & Waterman, 1982; Jones, 1991; Trevino & Nelson, 1995; Miller, 1996; Trevino et al., 1998; Trevino et al., 2000; O’Fallon & Butterfield, 2005, and Mohr & Wolfram, 2010).
In business everyone has the power with their ability to spend an amount of money. People have the capacity to change situations in which many individual does not. As an organization may affect some people, they might have the obligations to their employees, consumers, community and the outside world. They have the responsibility to manage or control the business in a way that it will not harm, positively the benefits like people as possible and themselves. This can be simple, there may always be a conflict of interest between various groups of people. Each decision made by business man or woman has to be made with an informed awareness of the specific situation and then act according to some sort of system of principals, which is Business Ethics.
Ethics is the branch of philosophy that deals with the principles correlated to human behavior concerning the rightness and wrongness of specific conduct, and to the good and bad that influences and ends those actions (Ditonary.com, 2011). In other words, ethics is the choice people effect in regards to a decision they need to achieve. Without ethics directing the choice an individual makes, moral preferences of what should or should not be done becomes irrelevant. While ethical decisions are made every day there are two different regions in which these choices are made.