This blog covers in a wide ranging way thoughts around the contemporary business environment - especially outsourcing and consulting. I aim to explore these in a skeptical way and tease apart what is really going on.
What is Business Ethics and how can we apply them?
Posted 4th September 2008 at 19:48 by JohnBlack
Business ethics is a form of applied ethics that examines the principles and moral or ethical dilemmas that arise in a business environment. Business ethics is relevant both to the conduct of individuals as well as the organisation as a whole and is an increasingly important issue for all organisations. Business ethics is a topic covering the practices that corporations should adhere to in order to establish an ethical, fair business.
Business ethics, is informed by rich and multiple sources including the literatures of philosophy (ethical, theological and legal), political economy, psychology, business and economics and day-to-day practice of course. Business ethics embraces all of the perspectives above: while not being reducible to any of them and its object is the study of the morality and immorality as well as the possible justification of economic systems. Business ethics, as any other take on human morality, takes it that we are all capable of doing the right or the wrong thing and that we aren't naturally inclined either way - we have a choice!
Business ethics can be applied to everything from the trees cut down in the Amazon forest to make the paper that a business sells to the ramifications of importing coffee from certain countries. It can even be an issue when deciding whether to trade with a particular country say a dictatorship when not trading can have severe impacts on the population actually being oppressed. Ethical issues can arise when companies must comply with multiple and sometimes conflicting legal or cultural standards between countries where varying practices are in place - Islamic business practice over usury being an example.
The other broad area of business ethics is "moral mazes of management" and includes the numerous ethical problems that managers must deal with on a daily basis, such as potential conflicts of interest, wrongful use of resources, mismanagement of contracts and agreements - all the usual fare for a business in the West then! And consider if a company's main purpose under capitalism is to maximize the returns to its shareholders - to what extent should they consider the interest of other stakeholders - how should they balance these interests. The tax avoidance of many leading organisations are often assailed as 'immoral' or 'unethical' practice as in this case shareholder value is being placed above that of other societal stakeholders these sheltered funds being secured at the expense of society within which the organisation works and makes its profit.
Business ethics, is informed by rich and multiple sources including the literatures of philosophy (ethical, theological and legal), political economy, psychology, business and economics and day-to-day practice of course. Business ethics embraces all of the perspectives above: while not being reducible to any of them and its object is the study of the morality and immorality as well as the possible justification of economic systems. Business ethics, as any other take on human morality, takes it that we are all capable of doing the right or the wrong thing and that we aren't naturally inclined either way - we have a choice!
Business ethics can be applied to everything from the trees cut down in the Amazon forest to make the paper that a business sells to the ramifications of importing coffee from certain countries. It can even be an issue when deciding whether to trade with a particular country say a dictatorship when not trading can have severe impacts on the population actually being oppressed. Ethical issues can arise when companies must comply with multiple and sometimes conflicting legal or cultural standards between countries where varying practices are in place - Islamic business practice over usury being an example.
The other broad area of business ethics is "moral mazes of management" and includes the numerous ethical problems that managers must deal with on a daily basis, such as potential conflicts of interest, wrongful use of resources, mismanagement of contracts and agreements - all the usual fare for a business in the West then! And consider if a company's main purpose under capitalism is to maximize the returns to its shareholders - to what extent should they consider the interest of other stakeholders - how should they balance these interests. The tax avoidance of many leading organisations are often assailed as 'immoral' or 'unethical' practice as in this case shareholder value is being placed above that of other societal stakeholders these sheltered funds being secured at the expense of society within which the organisation works and makes its profit.
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