Moral Aspects Of Business Ethics

The theme I have chosen for the Meeting the Management Challenge for this Assignment is “Business Ethics” In this essay I have looked into the definition of ethics, Business Ethics, International Principles of Business Ethics and How the use of Business ethics have influenced certain companies like “Volkswagen” and “Toshiba”. The importance of the use of business ethics to business leaders is also discussed further on in the essay.

Ultimately, businesses exist to make a profit for their owners and shareholders. In most cases, ethical behaviour adds expenses to the business, reducing profits. Profits are a good thing - they ensure that people have jobs. The smaller the profits, the fewer income tax dollars are paid, which would hurt government programs.

Business ethics refers to the consideration of moral decisions and responsibilities in the process of operating a business. Business ethics, practiced throughout the deepest layers of a company, become the heart and soul of the company 's culture and can mean the difference between success and failure. Values drive behavior and therefore need to be consciously stated, but they also need to be affirmed by actions. Ethical business environments are created with foundations of integrity, accountability and commitment.

1. Consequentialist moral theories see the moral rightness or wrongness of actions as a function of their results. If the consequences are sufficiently good, the action is right; if they are sufficiently bad, the action is wrong. However, nonconsequentialist theories see other factors as also relevant to the determination of right and wrong.

Today businesses are faced with challenges, one in particular is diversification. Diversification according to John Jefferson and his associates (2009) is a form of growth, and the marketing strategy of a company, which seeks to increase profitability through greater sales volume obtained from new products and new markets. Interesting Jefferson (2009) also, states, diversification can occur either at the business unit or corporate level. Which bring s me to my point on diversity in business ethics. Richard Daft (2015) believes that global diversity in the United States, “the domestic population is changing dramatically” (p.11). Whereas, Daft (20015) points out, diversity is no longer just about, sales volume, a marketing strategy, but innovation from a diversified group of people. However, in the early stages of corporate structure people diversification was not part of the equation.

With recent economic turmoil, ethical business practices have been thrown into the spotlight as a vital area with which companies need to improve on. Proper business ethics are vital for economic growth and progress as well as facilitating a productive and morally correct society. The United States has recently suffered large economic declines, the most significant of which occurred in 2001 and 2008. As the questions are asked and some answers given, the picture of big business not caring about the middle class individual is painted for the American people. Everyone has a finger to point, and many of these are aimed towards these large companies. With the blame falling on various financial institutions, people begin to dig deeper to

The work of setting a positive ethical climate starts at the top of the organization as positive ethical attitudes filter down to employees. Ferrell et al. (2015) states, “the more employees perceive an organization’s ethical culture to be the less likely they are to make unethical decisions” (p.134). Business ethics is not only about knowing what is right and wrong, or doing the right thing, ethics involves acting with responsibility, being objective when making decisions, putting honesty in all relationships, and maintaining employees’ fairness. According to Hughes, Ginnet, and Curpy (2012), “conflict over values can arise even when an organization has clearly published values because leaders and employees have divergent perceptions of whether the leader’s behavior embodies important corporate values” (p.177). Unfortunately, GM’s ethical organizational culture has been seriously disconnected from the policies stated in their company. In the past GM’s culture has favored cover-up over openness and legal contemplation over customer safety. The values embedded in GM’s organization were not put into practice. Product defects were concealed from top management as well as the public, not only hurting General Motor’s reputation as a quality customer driven culture, but also the owners of GM vehicles who were injured or died. A culture of secrecy seemed ingrained at General Motors, which can be blamed on former CEO leaders, the organizations structure, and organizational

This concept has shown prominence through every stage of business evolution and has still remained as an essential factor that every business in the modern generation strives to achieve. Profit not only shows a company’s efficient performance, but it also dictates how the company will be accepted within a society. This is supported by Friedman (1962, pp.23), as he mentions that ethical compromises can be made to achieve greater goals. Since the most fundamental goal of every business organisation is to earn profits and succeed amongst their competitors, it can be agreed that companies would be willing to sacrifice a certain amount of ethical decision making. The opportunity cost in this case is preferable for the people that would want to give up a portion of their ethical mindset to earn a larger profit share for their own selfish career oriented desires. (Lincoln, Pressley, & Little, 1982, pp.476).

The purpose of this short paper is to compare and contrast three different peer-reviewed journal articles and one online periodical. First, the paper provides a brief introduction of the four articles. Second, the paper compares and contrasts the four articles. Finally, the author presents his views on the topic of social responsibility and business ethics before concluding the paper.

Ethics, the search for ‘a good way of being’ for a wise course of action as it could be practiced by business firms is called business ethics. Ethics is business deals with the ethical path business firms ought to adopt. Afflicting the least suffering to humans and the nature in its entirety, achieving the greatest net benefit to the society and economy enriching the capability of the system in which it is functioning, being fair in all its dealings with its proximate and remote stakeholders, being prepared to correct its mal-habits and nurturing and enduring virtuous corporate character in totality, can be called business ethics. (Salehi & Saeidinia, 2012)

Business ethics is described by studying how terms are associated with ethics used in relation to business. So business ethics invites us to think about what right and wrong consist of in relation to business activity; about the goodness and badness of specific business situations; about the rights, responsibilities, obligations and duties that ought to govern business relationships; about what a fair distribution of the benefits and burdens of business activity might involve; and about what constitutes a virtuous business or a virtuous business person (Fryer, 2015).

Conventionally, the idea that the activity of business is essentially morally neutral and that ethical value must be imposed from outside the activity itself has gained wide credence and acceptance. Business is expected to meet certain external criteria, derived from the prevalent/dominant moral philosophy in society if it is to gain wide acceptance and be deemed legitimate by the society in which it functions and operates. This reluctance to accept the intrinsic morality of

The survival of an organization depends upon the integration of business codes with the societal ethics. Ethics concentrates on the general nature of morals and the specific moral choice an individual makes in relationship to others. It represents the rules and regulations governing conduct of the member of a profession. The area of focus in this essay is to explore the effects of business ethics.

According to prevailing ethical theory, specifically Kantian ethical theory, a monopolistic business is ethically permissible, in a free market context.

Business ethics can be defined as the critical examination of how people and institutions should behave in the world of commerce. There are many subcategories that we may look into when speaking of business ethics, in this essay I will be writing about advertising ethics. Advertising is practically unavoidable in today 's world, we see it in the streets, shops, magazines, television, on the internet, hear it on the radio. In this essay I will describe two ethical issues in advertising, show why business leaders need to remember to launch ethical campaigns and also have and look into some examples from the business world.