Business Ethics
Sierra Yuwono
WRIT 340 Prof. Steve Byars
June 8th, 2011
Assignment 1 – Ethics and Business Executive
My personal definition of business ethics would be a set of moral principles that a company or a business adheres to. This set of codes are self-determined by the company which then operates its business accordingly. It could also be defined as a set of rules that the company uses as a guideline for making decisions on issues that are moral-based.
To me, business ethics are highly normative, basically meaning that they are based on the standard of ethical expectations that the society expects businesses to comply to. This is highly perceptive and is different in various parts of the world. For example, something that the average Indonesian businessman would consider ethically normal such as employing someone under the age of 12 could be considered ethically wrong in countries such as the US.
Most countries’ governments have a set of laws and regulations to which they expect businesses to follow many of which prevent businesses from falling short of being ethical, however, a lot of these countries also have corrupted governments who wouldn’t mind making some money out of closing an eye and letting some businesses break the laws.
The ethical rights and wrongs of business decisions depend on the people who run the company. This, in turn, ties in to what image the company wants others to see when they think about the company. I think that as long as most of the society thinks of something as normatively okay, meaning that most of the people in the country thinks that it is humane and not frowned upon, then it would okay for the company to act accordingly.
My definition of being ethically correct in doing business would be to not directly harm anyone physically or mentally. Some examples from the case which I believe are ethically incorrect would be for Nike to keep hiring the manufacturing plant where the factory operator strip-searches female
WRIT 340 Prof. Steve Byars
June 8th, 2011
Assignment 1 – Ethics and Business Executive
My personal definition of business ethics would be a set of moral principles that a company or a business adheres to. This set of codes are self-determined by the company which then operates its business accordingly. It could also be defined as a set of rules that the company uses as a guideline for making decisions on issues that are moral-based.
To me, business ethics are highly normative, basically meaning that they are based on the standard of ethical expectations that the society expects businesses to comply to. This is highly perceptive and is different in various parts of the world. For example, something that the average Indonesian businessman would consider ethically normal such as employing someone under the age of 12 could be considered ethically wrong in countries such as the US.
Most countries’ governments have a set of laws and regulations to which they expect businesses to follow many of which prevent businesses from falling short of being ethical, however, a lot of these countries also have corrupted governments who wouldn’t mind making some money out of closing an eye and letting some businesses break the laws.
The ethical rights and wrongs of business decisions depend on the people who run the company. This, in turn, ties in to what image the company wants others to see when they think about the company. I think that as long as most of the society thinks of something as normatively okay, meaning that most of the people in the country thinks that it is humane and not frowned upon, then it would okay for the company to act accordingly.
My definition of being ethically correct in doing business would be to not directly harm anyone physically or mentally. Some examples from the case which I believe are ethically incorrect would be for Nike to keep hiring the manufacturing plant where the factory operator strip-searches female