Ethics and Business: Can they both survive in today’s market?
Denise Hairston
October 20, 2008
Ethics and Business: Can they both survive in today’s market?
The cost of doing business today has increased dramatically over the last several years. Business ethics has been quite controversial in recent years. With the downfalls of major companies like Enron and WorldCom has even lead the government to get involved. Michael Josephson, Founder and President of the Joseph and Edna Josephson Institute of Ethics, is quoted as saying “The expression that the purpose of business is to make a profit is, I think, an oversimplification. Clearly a business must make a profit in order to survive. Bringing in more money than you spend is critical to that. But to separate the purpose of business from the purpose of people who are in business is, I think, not a good thing.” (McCord, 2008) I think than a company that does not consider making a profit and maintaining high ethics for its customers and employees will not survive the long haul.
An important part of any company’s survival is their marketing. Marketing scholars have shown great interest in ethics as a research area over the last two decades. (Vitell, 2008) Significant ethics theories have been developed over this time frame. One theory states that policies that are put in place by the company are a huge influence on the decision making processes of employees in situations involving ethical issues. Brenner (1992) has argued that organizations whether they even know it or not, have an ethics program – either explicitly created or implicitly inherited. Examples of explicit aspects of ethics programs include codes of ethics, policy manuals, employee training and training materials, employee orientation programs and ethics committees. According to Brenner (1992), most of these programs, however, are not explicitly created, but are inherent in the culture of the organization. Examples of the more...