Introduction
Ethics in business is important of everyday moral and ethical norms to business. Perhaps, the Ten Commandments from Bible come to mind as an example of morality that still used by many today. These commandments carry concept of being truthful and honest, and try to stay away from theft and greed. An idea of stewardship can be found in the Bible as well as many other religious literatures that can be and have been applied to business.
Beside religion, philosophy also carries similar ethical traditions. For example, Plato’s main theme of Republic is justice, and Aristotle in his Politics cares model of economic relations, business and trade. Today, Business Ethics is the conduct that businesses carry in
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FACTs of WA-MU
Washington Mutual Bank, aka WA-MU, was organized in September 1889 to help provide funds for rebuilding Seattle after the great fire. Washington Mutual became the largest thrift in the US, and one of its largest banks. From that beginning, Washington Mutual has grown into financial services company that offered services in mortgages, credit cards and retail landings. “But if its rise was storied, its fall was spectacular, ending in the largest bank failure in American history to date” (The New York Times, 2010). Sadly, Washington Mutual Bank, or WA-MU, was seized on Thursday, September 25, 2008.
In April 21, 1982, Washington Mutual acquired Murphey Favre, Inc. and Composite Research & Management Co. WA-MU decided to keep on the firm's executive vice president, Kerry K. Killinger. Kerry was elevated to the position of president in 1988 and chief executive officer in 1990 (The New York Times, 2010). Kerry’s leadership brought new strategies to the company. According to The New York Times (2010), in July 1996, Mr. Killinger engineered the purchase of the 158-branch California-based American Savings Bank, a $1.4 billion deal that nearly doubled the size of Washington Mutual, instantly making it the third largest American savings and loan.
Financial centers were redesigned, exchanging the traditional banking atmosphere for that of a department
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.
closing the stores they could have done community outreach or service projects to help lower the rate of crime. They could have led the establishment of a neighborhood crime watch. They could have set up a mentorship program for teens at risk. There are a multitude of programs they could have implemented, some could probably have been used as a tax write off. If all of these efforts failed then I understand closing the stores. If they had to close the stores they should have made every effort to be sure that the displaced employees were able to find a job in another store or assisted them in being placed in another job. They also need to make every attempt to keep the building they were using occupied or cleaned up until it is occupied. How do these actions contribute to being socially responsible? It shows they care about their community, that even though they may have to shut down a store, they still
“Business ethics is the application of general ethical ideas to business behavior” (Lawrence & Weber, 2017, p. 94) and it’s through these ideas that good, bad, moral, and immoral decisions are made based on the foundation and framework of how we view life. For this reason, our moral compass when based on a biblical worldview should influence how we approach making decisions as it pertains to business ethics (Porter,2013).
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,
What is principle of justice in acquisition? Our book gives us an analogy concerning basketball player, Wilt Chamberlain that was used by Nozick. The idea
Being a business major, most of our class are either learning the ethics and being civil in business from being managers to CEO’s, or tips on how to look at financial statements and balance sheets all day without being bored. However, it also shows us the civility and incivility side of business through some courses which revolve around managing. My concentration is management, and most of the classes I have taken show how being a manager can either go civil or uncivil, depending on how you lead your company and employees. One of these classes, fundamentals of management, taught by Dr. Nadia Novotorova, has shown a lot on how civility and incivility can change the way your company works in numerous ways.
an action can't be right if the people who are made happy by it are outnumbered by the people who are made unhappy by it.
Business Ethics is a set of moral principles applied in the commercial world. Business ethics provide guidelines for acceptable behavior by organizations in both their strategy formulation and day-to-day operations. An ethical approach is becoming necessary both for corporate success and a positive corporate image. Following pressure from
Therefore, Market West accepted the corporation stock as partial debt. Hooper and Yoder agreed to add Brian Bradley who worked for Market West as the third director. Hooper colluded with Bradley and violated a fiduciary duty to Yoder by issuing 95 shares of stock to himself, 5 shares to Bradley, and none to Yoder. Furthermore, Hooper got paid $141,000 salary from the business without Yoder knowing. More importantly, Hooper and Bradly voted to force Yoder to leave the corporation. After Yoder found out that Hooper broke their agreement, violated Yoder’s rights and duties, acted dishonestly, and made unethical decisions, Yoder sued Hooper and Beautiful Daydreams in the District Court. Under the common law, with these facts, the court supported Yoder and ordered Hooper to give back one-half of the salary plus one-half of the shares of stock to Yoder.
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.
Later the same day, the Bank of America announced that it would be purchasing Merrill Lynch.
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
On October 1, 2005, the Bank entered the credit card lending business by acquiring Providian Financial Corporation. These acquisitions enabled Washington Mutual Bank to expand across the country, to build its customer base, and to become the largest savings and loan association in the country. The Bank had four business segments
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.