Business Ethics

Ethics is a branch of philosophy concerned with determining what conduct is good or right and what conduct is bad or wrong. Good or right conduct is said to be ethical or moral. Bad or wrong conduct is said to be unethical or immoral. Ethics attempts to determine what people "should" do in order to "do the right thing." Philosophers generally say that what someone "should" do in a given setting is a "moral obligation" or a "moral duty."

Business ethics is a subset of ethics generally. No special ethical principles apply only in business settings. Ethics is taught in business schools today because there has been a sense in recent years that some people in business have acted in unethical ways. Examples include tobacco company advertising that attempted for decades to persuade consumers that cigarettes promoted health and were not addictive; the savings and loan scandals of the 1980s; and in recent years, the accounting fraud at Enron and other companies. Since at least the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, some people in business have been accused of enriching themselves at the expense of society.

Determining what conduct is legal is not the same question as

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Friedman asserted that the idea that business managers have any social responsibility other than to generate as much profit as possible for the business's owners is a "fundamentally subversive doctrine. An example would be the deceptive tobacco advertising referred to above. Many people would consider these laws themselves to be immoral. There are many more than this as a Google search will demonstrate. Some people claim that Friedman's views provide justification for businesses to engage in all sorts of socially harmful behavior. " This principle cannot be universalized because everyone would then claim a right to lie while insisting that others tell the truth. Yet many people think that refusing to comply with such racially discriminatory laws was the right thing to do. In Kant's theory, for an action to be ethical it must be reversible, universalizable, and treat others with respect and with their consent:

1) Reversibility.

Kant's theory also rejects the idea that the end justifies the means.

So conduct can be legal, but unethical.

The issues raised above by Drucker and Friedman continue to be widely discussed and debated. " Some form of this rule is part of all the world's major religions. Outcome-Based Ethics

Utilitarianism is an ethical theory developed by British philosophers Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. As members of society, one argument goes, every business has a moral obligation to consider the effects of its actions on all of the firm's "stakeholders": its employees, retirees, suppliers, and customers; communities where the firm does business; and anyone else affected by the firm's actions.

There are several important things to observe about this theory.

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Approximate Word count = 1657
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

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