Business Ethics In Corporate World

Ethics

Èthics is the discipline that deals with moral duty and responsibility. Ethics can also be regarded as moral principles or values. Morality is a guideline or system of moral conduct. Moral behaviour refers to that which relates to principles of right, wrong and fairness in behaviour.

Business Ethics

From the book, definition of business ethics is business policies and practices potentially controversial issues such as bribery, discrimination and corporate social responsibility. Business ethics are often provides a basic outline to follow in order to gain public acceptance.

Business ethics is concerned with morality and fairness in behaviour, actions and practise that take place within a business context. Business ethics is the study

In the 1930s came the New Deal, business was blamed to for the country’s woes. Business was asked to work closely with the government to increase the family income. By the 1950s, New Deal had evolved into the Fair Deal by President Harry S. Truman; this program defined this matter as civil rights and environmental responsibility as ethical issues that business had to address. Until 1960 ethical issue related to business were discussed within theology. Individual moral issues related to business were addressed in churches, synagogues, and mosques. Questions about fair wages, morality of capitalism and labor practices were raised by religious leaders. Some catholic colleges and universities began to offer courses in social ethics. Protestants also developed ethics courses in schools and encouraged individuals to work hard, frugal and attain success in the capitalistic system. This provided foundation for the future fields of business

The reputation of the Arthur Andersen disappeared overnight and the firm went out of business.

The Green Paper entitled ‘Promoting a Europe Framework for Corporate Social Responsibility’ in July 2001 was published to launch a public rebate about how to promote CSR in Europe framework and the concept of CSR. Half of the 250 responses received were come from Europe.

The Commission Communication set up a platform named Europe Multi stakeholder Forum on CSR to encourage transparency of CSR practices, running from 16 October 2002 until mid-2004. A report which contained results and recommendations for further action will be presented to the Commission. Many surveys from European countries such as Germany, France showed that most of the companied believed that responsible business practice is the key to the long term success.

This can be proved by the growth of non-financial reports. Non-financial report is becoming mainstreams for large corporations by the survey of KPMG 2002 International Survey on Corporate Sustainability Reporting. 45 percent of Global Fortune Top 250 companies publish the report which gradually included environmental, economic and social reports. The sustainability reports and Corporate Responsibility reports increased from 5% to 15% and 1% to 7% respectively between 2000 and