An Introduction to Ethics:
1. Definition & Objective
2. BE: Concept, Importance &
Scope
3. Unethical Issues
4. Advantages of BE
Definition & Objective of
Ethics
Manner by which one tries to live one’s life according to a standard of
right or wrong behavior.
• In both how one thinks and behaves toward others and how one would
like others to think and behave toward them.
Business Ethics: Concept,
Importance & Scope
WHAT ARE the Factors that influence ethics.?
• One's upbringing.
• One’s religion.
• One's social traditions and beliefs.
Society: Structured community of people bound together by similar
traditions and customs.
• Business ethics defined:
• Application of standards of moral behavior in business situation
• Business ethics concepts /category
• Business ethics as Ethical decision making
• Business Ethics as Personal Integrity and Social Responsibility
• Business ethics Scope
Can be approached from two perspectives.
• Descriptive: Documentation of what is happening.
• Normative (prescriptive): Recommendation of what should happening
Unethical Issues
Understanding Right and
Wrong
1
Moral standards: Principles by which judgments are made about good and bad
behavior and are based on:
• Religious beliefs.
• Cultural beliefs.
• Culture: Particular set of attitudes, beliefs, and practices that characterize a group of individuals.
• Philosophical beliefs.
Factors Ensuring Ethical
Conduct
Belief that the activity is within reasonable ethical and legal limits.
• Code of ethics: Company’s written standards
of ethical behavior that are designed to
guide managers and employees in making
the decisions and choices they face every
day.
Justifying Unethical Behavior
Belief that the activity is within reasonable ethical and legal limits.
Belief that the activity is in the individual’s or the corporation’s best interest.
Belief that the activity is safe because it will never be found out or publicized.
Belief that because the activity helps the company, it will be condoned, and the perpetrator will
be protected.
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Understanding Right and Wrong
2
Sources of beliefs.
• Family and friends.
• Ethnic background.
• Religion.
• School.
• Media.
• Personal role models and mentors.
Morality: Collection of influences built up over a person’s lifetime.
Advantages of Business Ethics
Standards of ethical behavior are absorbed by osmosis as individuals observe the
examples set by everyone around them. Ethical behavior can be based on experience
of human existence rather than any abstract concepts of right and wrong.
Morals and values: Set of personal principles by which one aims to live one’s life.
• Value system: Set of personal principles formalized into a code of behavior.
• Intrinsic values: Quality by which a value is a good thing in itself.
• Pursued for its own sake, whether anything comes from that pursuit or not.
• For example??? Instrumental values: Quality by which the pursuit of one value is a good way to
reach another value. For example??
Advantages of business ethics
• List down here what would be the possible advantages of integrating ethics in a
business affair
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Value Conflicts
Impact of a value system on individuals can be seen in the extent to which
their daily lives are influenced by those values. Occur when one is presented
with a situation that places one’s value system in direct conflict with an action.
• Personal value system: Specific choices and responses to a situation by an individual.
Doing the Right Thing
Categories under which individuals classify ethics.
• Simple truth.
• Question of someone’s personal integrity as
demonstrated by behavior.
• Rules of appropriate individual behavior.
• Rules of appropriate behavior for a community or society.
The Golden Rule
• Problem with the rule is the
assumption that others would
follow the same principles as
one would do.