M2

• Business ethics


  Standards of moral conduct, behavior and judgment in business
• Business ethics


  • Involves making the moral and right decisions while engaging in business activities
  • Businesses are legally bound and socially obligated to conduct business in an ethical manner
• Business ethics


  Based on the personal values and standards of each person engaged in business
• Main purpose of business ethics

  • To help business and would-be business determine what business practices are right and what are wrong, and guide them in making the right business decisions
• Special purposes of business ethics

  • To make businessmen realize they cannot employ double standards
  • To show businessmen that common practices they thought were right are really wrong
  • To serve as a standard or ideal upon which business conduct should be based
  • To assist the business world in formulating codes of conduct - personal, company and professional
• Scope of business ethics

  • Covers all conduct, behavior and judgment in business, from the slightest deviation from what is right to illegal and dishonest acts
  • Covers even acts that may be legal but which are wrong because they violate ethical principles
• There is still no uniform standards of right and wrong from which all business may base their actions
• Fair business competition


  Achieving success solely by offering better products, services and terms than the competitor
• A business has an economic impact on society

  Through the wages it pays to its employees, the materials it buys from suppliers, and the prices it charges customers
• A business has a positive social impact


  If it pays fair living wages and benefits to employees, pays suppliers fairly and on time, and gives customers good value for the price
• A business has an environmental impact


  Businesses that implement good environmental policies can reduce their internal costs and promote a positive image
• Ethical conduct expected of business managers

  • Acknowledge their role is to serve the business enterprise and community
  • Avoid abuse of executive power for personal gain
  • Reveal conflicts of personal and company interests
  • Be concerned with difficulties of subordinates and treat them fairly
  • Recognize subordinates' right to information
  • Fully evaluate effects on employees and community before decisions
  • Cooperate with colleagues and not seek personal advantage at their expense
• There is an inherent conflict between ethics and the pursuit of profit
• Pope Francis: 'Humanity is experiencing a turning point in its history as can be seen from the advances occurring in the sciences and technology. We are in an age of knowledge and information and that this has led to new and often anonymous kinds of power. We have today an economy of exclusion and inequality.'
• Pope Benedict XVI: 'Market economics must be underpinned by commitments to particular moral goods and a certain version of the human person if it is to serve rather than undermine humanity's common good. The economy needs ethics in order to function correctly not an ethics which is people-oriented.'