The Importance Of Ethical Principles In Business

Ethical principles are universal standards of right and wrong prescribing the kind of behavior an ethical company or person should and should not engage in. These principles provide a guide to making decisions but they also establish the criteria by which your decisions will be judged by others.

In business, how people judge your character is critical to sustainable success because it is the basis of trust and credibility. Both of these essential assets can be destroyed by actions can be, or are perceived to be unethical. Thus, successful executives must be concerned with both their character and their reputation.

Abraham Lincoln described character as the tree and reputation as the shadow. Your character is what you really are; your reputation is what people think of you. Thus, your reputation is purely a function of perceptions (i.e., do people think your intentions and actions are honorable and ethical) while your character is determined and defined by your actions (i.e., whether your actions are honorable and ethical).

Studies on business ethics have examined meaningful work as a moral issue concerning the management of others and ourselves, exploring whether there are definable characteristics of meaningful work to which we have moral rights, and whether there are moral duties to ourselves and others to fulfill those rights.

In the human quest for meaning, work

These dilemmas have derived from the lifestyle followed by him, peer pressure, relative ethics theory, his code of conduct in the organization, morals and principles and flexibility to bend with the changing environment.

Peer reporting and whistleblowing has become a part and parcel of the organization. Ethical dilemmas faced by individual has led to stress, tension and reduced efficiency of an individual at workplace thus hampering the productivity of the