Business Ethics

Business Ethics


Business ethics (also corporate ethics) is a form of applied ethics or professional ethics that examines ethical principles and moral or ethical problems that arise in a business environment. It applies to all aspects of business conduct and is relevant to the conduct of individuals and entire organizations.
 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, both within major corporations and within academia.
 For example, today most major corporations promote their commitment to non-economic values under headings such as ethics codes and social responsibility charters. Adam Smith said, "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.

An important distinction to remember is that behaving ethically is not quite the same thing as behaving lawfully:

• Ethics are about what is right and what is wrong
• Law is about what is lawful and what is unlawful

An ethical decision is one that is both legal and meets the shared ethical standards of the community
Businesses face ethical issues and decisions almost every day – in some industries the issues are very significant.  For example:

• Should businesses profit from problem gambling?
• Should supermarkets sell lager cheaper than bottled water?
• Is ethical shopping a luxury we can’t afford?

 When business people speak about “business ethics” they usually mean one of three things:
 (1) avoid breaking the criminal law in one’s work-related activity;
 (2) avoid action that may result in civil law suits against the company; and
(3) avoid actions that are bad for the company image.

 Businesses are especially concerned with these three things since they involve loss of money and company reputation. In theory, a business could address these three concerns by assigning corporate attorneys and public relations experts to escort employees on their daily activities.

Business ethics has both normative and descriptive dimensions. As a corporate practice and a career specialization, the field is primarily normative.

Regards,
amrita Kumari ( BBA, MBA)
Junior HR Executive
www.AeroSoftCorp.com
www.AeroSoft.in
www.AeroSoft.co.in
www.AeroSoftseo.com
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