- "Business ethics (also known as corporate ethics) is a form of applied ethics or professional ethics, that examines ethical principles and moral or ethical problems that can arise in a business environment."
A discussion of ethical issues that arise in the world of business.
Importance of Ethics in Business: Understanding the reasons why ethics matter in the business realm, and the advantages of ethical behavior.
Ethical Theories: Familiarizing yourself with different ethical theories such as consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics.
Ethical Decision Making: Developing skills to make ethical and practical business decisions.
Corporate Social Responsibility: Assessing a company's responsibilities to society by contributing time, resources, and money to various causes.
Whistleblowing: Knowing when and how to report misconduct within an organization without fear of retaliation.
Codes of Conduct: Following ethical guidelines within the company, and understanding the repercussions of violating the codes.
Conflicts of Interest: Recognizing and avoiding conflicts of interest when making business decisions.
Transparency and Accountability: Implementing transparency measures in business operations to ensure accountability.
Fairness and Justice: Promoting equitable treatment for all stakeholders, including employees, customers, and suppliers.
Environmental Ethics: Understanding the impact of business on the environment, and implementing sustainable and ethical practices.
Bribery and Corruption: Understanding the unethical practices of unduly influencing people for personal gains.
Human Rights: Respecting and promoting the basic human rights of all stakeholders.
Diversity and Inclusion: Promoting and encouraging diversity, tolerance and inclusivity in the workplace.
Intellectual Property: Respecting and recognizing the rights of the original creators, patents, and trademarks that exists for intellectual property.
Leadership and Organizational Ethics: Developing ethical leadership skills for management and organizational decisions to ensure that all influential individuals and leadership is ethical.
Deontological Ethics: This type of ethics is reliant on fixed, consistent moral principles. It stresses on duties rather than the outcome of an action.
Utilitarian Ethics: This type of ethics focuses on achieving the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people. It helps define the quality of ethical decision-making based on the assessment of costs and benefits.
Virtue Ethics: This type of ethics emphasizes the moral character of an individual. It evaluates moral decisions based on the agent's character.
Care Ethics: This type of ethics revolves around caring relationships between people, animals, and the environment. It advocates making ethical decisions based on the emotional bond between individuals.
Egoism: Egoism concentrates on self-interest, beliefs, and choices. It guides people to make decisions based on the benefit of the person or the organization.
Relativism: This type of ethics ascertains that ethical principles and values differ from culture to culture. It implies that there is no absolute set of ethical values.
Environmental Ethics: This type of ethics assesses the morality of human behavior concerning the natural environment. It focuses on humankind's responsibility towards nature.
Legal Ethics: This type of ethics governs professional conduct standards and rules for the court officials, including lawyers and judges.
Leadership Ethics: This type of ethics evaluates the integrity of a leader. It defines ethical principles necessary for good leadership, management, and administration of a company.
Gender Ethics: This type of ethics addresses the moral issues of sexual and gender-based discrimination, including sexism and homophobia. It promotes fair competition and ethical standards in professional and private life.
- "It applies to all aspects of business conduct and is relevant to the conduct of individuals and entire organizations."
- "These ethics originate from individuals, organizational statements or the legal system."
- "These norms, values, ethical, and unethical practices are the principles that guide a business."
- "Business ethics have two dimensions, normative business ethics or descriptive business ethics."
- "Academics attempting to understand business behavior employ descriptive methods."
- "The range and quantity of business ethical issues reflects the interaction of profit-maximizing behavior with non-economic concerns."
- "Interest in business ethics accelerated dramatically during the 1980s and 1990s."
- "Most major corporations today promote their commitment to non-economic values under headings such as ethics codes and social responsibility charters."
- "Adam Smith said in 1776, 'People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.'"
- "Governments use laws and regulations to point business behavior in what they perceive to be beneficial directions."
- "Ethics implicitly regulates areas and details of behavior that lie beyond governmental control."
- "The emergence of large corporations with limited relationships and sensitivity to the communities in which they operate accelerated the development of formal ethics regimes."
- "Maintaining an ethical status is the responsibility of the manager of the business."
- "According to a 1990 article in the Journal of Business Ethics, 'Managing ethical behavior is one of the most pervasive and complex problems facing business organizations today.'" (Note: There were not enough specific quotes to address additional questions beyond this point.)