Ethical Dimensions Of Business Ethics

Business ethics is primarily a subset of ethics and no special set of ethical values adheres only to the world of business. Unethical acts are immoral, whether or not a corporate person has committed them. In the past few years, numerous business wrongs, such as insider trading, the Chit fund scandal, the Bhopal gas tragedy, the Kodaikanal case of a leading fast moving consumer goods company, and the savings and loan industry collapse have been heard off almost daily. Ethics can be basically described as the study of what is right or good for people considering the whole of humanity. It tries to describe what people must do and how should they go about in achieving their goals. Business ethics, which is a part of applied ethics, is the study

In the relationship between the end customers and business, ethical issues permeate marketing techniques, product safety, and consumer protection. The relationship between business and its owners bristles with ethical questions involving corporate governance, shareholder voting, and management’s duties to the shareholders. The relationship among competitors has numerous ethical matters, including unbiased competition and the effects of conspiracy. The communication between business and society at large presents additional ethical dimensions: contamination of the physical environment, commitment to the community’s economic and social infrastructure, and reduction of natural resources. Not only do all of these issues recur at the international level, but additional ones present themselves, such as corruption of foreign officials, misuse of less-developed countries, and conflicts among differing cultures and value systems. In deciding the ethical issues raised by business conduct, it is helpful to use a seeing-knowing-doing approach. Most importantly, the decision maker should see (identify) the ethical issues involved in the projected conduct, including the ethical implications of the various

It has been observed that great amounts of economic power had been concentrated in a relatively few large corporations, that the ownership of these corporations had become widely discrete, and that the shareholders had become far removed from active participation in management. Since past few years, these trends have continued steadily. Therefore, huge amounts of wealth and power are controlled by a small number of business entities, which are in turn controlled by a small group of corporate officers. These changes raise a huge number of social, policy, and ethical issues about the governance of large, publicly owned corporations. Many people insist that companies playing such an important economic role should have a responsibility to undertake projects that helps society in ways that go beyond mere financial efficiency in producing goods and services. In some cases, the idea of corporate commitments comes from industrialists