Essay On Ethical Business Behavior

Introduction

Ethical business behavior is about being upfront in dealing with people involved in the business, such as customers, partners, employees, and other stakeholders. However, it is a commonly accepted fact in contemporary business environment that ethical business behavior had become largely relativistic and normative. In this essay, I will go over five select quotes from five different authors in an effort to understand different facets of business ethics that I feel important to look into and define ethics in business settings.

Quote 1: Business, like poker, is a form of competition. In this competition, the rules are different from what they are in ordinary social dealings. Anyone who abides by ordinary moral standards instead of the rules of business is placed at a disadvantage. Therefore, it is not unethical or immoral to abide by the current rules of business. (These rules are determined by what is generally done in business and in part by legal statutes governing business activities.)

By this thought, Norman Chase Gillespie (133) decried the normative and relativistic understanding of ethics in business in the contemporary times; uninfluenced by morality. The idea boils down to this: If everyone in business behaves in a certain way, that’s the rule of the game; thus, the current ethical

I tend to disagree, being aware of the adage that ‘birds of the same feather flock together’. Certainly, unethical business maneuverings will be effective in business but only within unethical business circles. The bad smell of business immorality and unethical scheming has a way of going out in the open before the eyes of the consumers and will cast a negative light into these unethical businesses, acting like negative self-advertising. Moreover, it is wiser to deal with businesses of good moral and ethical standards to avoid trust issues and unpredictable