Introduction to Business Ethics

Ethics is a discipline that answers certain kinds of questions such as what is right, what is good, and what is a good life.

Because of the current legal regulations and increased awareness of both individuals and businesses, nowadays the relationship between ethics and business is almost inevitable.

Because of the current legal regulations and increased awareness of both individuals and businesses, nowadays the relationship between ethics and business is almost inevitable. Thus, as future employees and managers, it’s important to have business ethics training for students.

Ethical behaviors like honesty, not stealing, helping people, and respecting the rights of others are desirable behaviors that help to organize life everywhere.

Ethical problems cause people to make choices between various dilemmas.

There are three major areas of study within ethics. These are; Meta-ethics, normative ethics and applied ethics.

• Firstly, there might be some gray fields between the relation of business and society which hasn’t been covered with legal regulations yet,
• Secondly, free-market and regulatedmarket mechanisms don’t provide sufficient guidance to instances with ethical consequences,
• And the third argument expresses that, especially complex ethical issues could require a common understanding of justice among society.

The instrumental perspective explains the functional extension of ethics for business. Most businesses implement ethical norms optimally just for supporting business success and use it as a tool for business strategies, operations, and organizational design.

The philosophical perspective explains the meaning of business from an ethical viewpoint. This perspective takes the main question of ethics which is “what is a good life?” and adapts that understanding into the business activities.

Normative perspective concerns rules and principles that are expected to
shape behaviors.

Descriptive perspective concerns the way how things are done instead of how it
should be.

It’s possible to define business ethics as a form of applied ethics that examines ethical rules and principles within a commercial context.

Business ethics focuses specifically on how ethical standards should be applied to business policies, institutions, and behavior.

The theory claims that managers’ beliefs, ethical sophistication, and associated ethical actions will improve with time, practice, and knowledge where other certain academic views are supporting this approach as well.

• Enhance business performance
• Comply with Legal Requirements
• Prevent or Minimize Harm
• Meet Demands of Business Stakeholders
• Promote Personal Morality

In general, values are beliefs or standards that incline us to behave or choosein one way rather than another.

Norms can be defined as a reflection of social values that are shared by the individuals.

Principle is a general statement and a sort of obligation that identifies correct behaviors set by an individual or group.

• Individual level
• Organizational level
• Association level
• Societal level
• Global level

Ethics code is a sort of organizational philosophy that expresses the obligations of
organizations to the stakeholders and the dominant values in the organization.