Understanding Business Ethics

Understanding Business Ethics

  • Submitted By: rainyzin
  • Date Submitted: 09/27/2010 12:13 PM
  • Category: Business
  • Words: 999
  • Page: 4
  • Views: 683

Business Ethics

Assignment



1. What is ethics? According to the dictionary, ethics is:
1. the study of standards of conduct and moral judgment; moral philosophy
2. a treatise on this study
3. the system or code of morals of a particular person, religion, group, profession, etc.
Part of this definition is easy to understand. The first one refers to an academic concept. Philosophers, law professors, socialists, moralists and a whole host of other academics are engaged in the study of what is considered moral behavior. The study involves looking at different theories of ethics such as: situational ethics, consequential ethics, values ethics, utilitarian ethics, moralistic ethics, ethical realism, ethical hierarchy, principle ethics and moral development of ethics.
The second definition is simple too... it just refers to all the writings about all of these different theories of ethics.
The third definition, on the other hand, is where things get complicated.
Ethics refers to the concept of what is right and wrong, moral and immoral. Ethical behavior is generally considered behavior that is in line with the accepted moral code, and that is proper. Unfortunately, however, there is not one clear answer to what is ethics or what is ethical, because both morality and ethics and relative terms.
The Benefits & Effects of Ethical Behaviors
Focus point:
l           Benefits and Drawbacks of behaving “ethically”.
l           Methods of Controlling Environmental Costs
l           Methods of encouraging “Ethical Behavior”
 

Benefits of behaving “Ethically”:
 
There are certain advantages for businesses in behaving in an ethical or socially responsible way.
 
1)   “Ethical Behavior can be good for sales”…
 
Increasing numbers of consumers are taking into account a firm’s behavior when buying products. As a result, ethical behavior can be good for sales,
(E.g. Body Shop. A feature...

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