Business Ethics: Law essay on BUSINESS
Ethics in every business is an ongoing topic for the discussion, be it a small business or a major corporation, ethical principles matters. Taking this discussion forward, in the initial section, essay presents the overview of business ethics in management. Further, discussion moves with briefing a wide range of ethical principles considered by business. Afterwards, next section of the essay covers the ethical dimensions of a business situation and attempts to identify those identifications in detail. In this context, importance of business ethics comes into view to meet business’ expectations.
Firstly, if business ethics is concerned for the explanation, it is obvious to define what ethics state. Therefore, to understand the concept of ethics in business framework, ethics can be defined as what is right and what is wrong. In addition, ethics refers to a structure of moral principles, a sense of integrity and immorality of activities/performance and outcomes of these activities (Crane & Dirk. 2007). Besides, in conceptual framework of business, ethics is the study of good and bad, right and wrong and lawful and unlawful actions of people associated with a business.
Furthermore, when management people talk about business ethics, they generally mean one of the three things: avoid breaching the immoral law in one’s work-related action or performance, avoid actions that may result in civil law going against the company and avoid activities that are awful for the company image and reputation. It is said that ethics are formulated through the operation of forces around the individuals’ environment such as family influences, experiences, values and morals, situation factors and most importantly the legal system (Crane & Dirk. 2007). Subsequently, an outline of business ethical principles and moral values has been framed in the next segment.
Although from the business’ point of view, they have to meet economic expectations and on the other hand, they also have ethical responsibilities to take into account at the time of performance. Therefore, everyone from the top, middle and lower level of an organization is required to take care to meet all these responsibilities. On this front, business ethical responsibilities are the first and foremost to be considered in an organization. Therefore, to make a right decision on what is right and what is wrong, following major principles of business ethics should be taken into care. First, no favoritism should be made based on caste, color and religion. For this, the policies and procedures should be fair and transparent. Moreover, an organization can provide the proper provision to the workforce for safety. Employees should not be allowed to utilize the company’s resources for their personal usage. In sum, keeping privacy of information about employee’s personal lives and work assessment is also an important principle of business ethics. It is recommended to build strong ethical pillar of a business that employees should take initiative and come forward to report to the management about any genuine or possible violation action or an event that could affect the business and its reputation. Similarly, acting with integrity is viewed as a natural succession of a business. At this point, an instructor stated that integrity is regarded as one of the most important ethical concepts because it covers up a wide area of ethics. She also added that those who work with integrity are directed by a set of key principles that makes an impact on their decisions and behaviors (South University. 2012).
Furthermore, some aspects of business ethics can be discussed including the several ethical problems that management must address on a daily basis, such as possible divergences of interest, illegal and unfair use of resources, and mismanagement of contracts, etc. Therefore, a situation ‘corruption/fraud in organization’ has been chosen to identify the ethical dimensions of it.
Basically corruption and fraud starts at micro level in business framework and if it is not controlled it takes a national dimension and then turns into a root for major concern. Though corruption usually starts with one personal, it normally reaches to other member. It is likely to increase or exist if managers, supervisors and co-workers detect unethical behavior but do not pay attention to it and avoid it on the basis of their perception that it might cause them harm. This fraud can be in terms of financial, fraud by misrepresentation, employee theft and bribery. Besides, there are legal, psychological dimensions which attack corruption through laws, policies and psychological sanctions. But these dimensions are not only enough as far as corruption is concerned in organizations. What most needed is ethical and moral dimension (Trevino & Nelson. 2011). The next segment of essay talks about the ethical dimension of corruption in business framework.
In an attempt to identify the moral dimensions, some relativistic aspects come into sight which may be considered. Primary dimension from the moral point of view is the secularist mentality. Its ethical relativism states that moral laws and policies are not discovered and do not even forces themselves upon any business from a top authority (Sullivan, Haunschild & Page. 2007). These rules and norms are people made only suggesting fair and just is what they say is right, and unfair is what they say is wrong. On the other hand, a survey also has been made to recognize the dimensions that may impact ethical decision-making at organization level. Taking that survey, a measurement scale was prepared to assess the different faces of ethical philosophy an organization may have to take into account in case of corruption (Velasquez & Knapp. 2011). The dimensions recognized were that, fair or unfairness, culturally and traditionally acceptability or non-acceptability of it. Moreover, the ethical aspects such, corruption violating an unwritten contract or not and its acceptability or non-acceptability to the business family are considered as ethical dimensions of corruption (Napal & Geetanee. 2006).
In the simplest terms, a fraudulent behavior is any act that violates the prevailing organizational rules. However, it is also considered that fraud or bribery in organization is rated as a very serious matter and as a disturbing factor to ethical values of a business. In most of the matters, it is seen that an individual attempts to act unethical and unlawful which makes profit for that individual. In this case, a separate notion is established to assess whether it is accepted/unaccepted or fair/unfair. Usually, corruption as a bad conduct is quite opposite of ethics which is referred as a good induct. For this reason, any consideration has to start with what moral values exist or are supposed to be prevailed in the organization because such values and their principal beliefs can change in space and time (Frederickson, 2002).
Furthermore, the issue of defining corruption from culturally acceptability or non-acceptability perspective brings the discussion at a point that explains the type of culture existing in business context. An organization can have any of the culture in practice from following; normative, pragmatic, club, fortress, and tough-guy, bet one’s company or process culture. These cultures determine the relativism ethical aspect of corruption in terms of its consideration. From the perspective of ethical dimension, cultural corruption is all about what actions are concerned at personal, organizational and societal levels to compose wrongdoings (Pilley & Dorasamy. 2012). Though, ethical business culture refers to held business in such a manner that all stakeholders’ interests within a competitive framework of market-driven economy would be respected. In support current state of the art in struggling with corruption is taken into account.
Subsequently, it can also be identified that the cause of the corruption or fraud in enterprises is greed and individual desire for more of something such as money than the requirement. This is viewed as one of the ethical dimensions ‘personal ethics’. As a result, this leads to situations of injustice, particularly commutative justice such as withholding information, deceptive advertising, and execution of needless operations to engender higher commissions. The brief outline of these unethical behaviors depicts that corruption has an ethical dimension (Vasile & Dinu. 2008).
Nevertheless, organizational ethics can also be an aspect of fraudulent activities. This can be defined by taking organization’s reward or incentive systems as they intend to endorse certain behaviors that are anticipated to lead to the desired results. Accordingly, they can entail the employees to perform such activities that may cause unwanted effects. It is common that many of the unethical behaviors giving birth to fraud and corruption in business are related to the existence of mean incentive systems. If such scenarios exist in the organizations then conceptual frameworks of fairness and justice can be used to examine the ethicality of those (Vasile & Dinu. 2008).
As this essay focused on ethical dimensions of fraud and corruption, it also outlines the significance of business ethics. Operating a business needs adequate consideration to a number of issues outside the usual scope of making money, of which ethics is most definitely one. As business grows and becomes more important, it makes an impact on the lives and circumstances of people in ways – through bringing jobs, creating and generating wealth and stimulating others to expand their businesses. A major part of engaging in this process is, understanding business ethics, which if not up to graze can leave one with an unfair image and can even ruin the business (Poff & Deborah. 2010).
Ethics is undoubtedly a vital business subject for any industrialist to study, but it also has a broader application throughout organizations. One man’s concept of ethical principles and for the best may be completely unlike from another man’s idea about it, therefore, it’s important to create a collective set of ethics that symbolize the entire organization rather than just adopting a gradual approach. As per the ethical dimensions discussed for the situation, adoption of business ethics principle can be competent to fight with it and to bring the good reputation back because a high-class image, the main asset on which organizations build up their long run success cannot be bought from somewhere. It is based on significant respect of business ethical principles in running and managing the business. Once business ethics exist in any organization, it helps retaining both new and old clients and compels proper attention and on the other hand it will help gaining an upper hand over the competitors (Comer & Vega. 2011).
On the basis of overall study, it can be concluded that ethical responsibility is the need of every business which determines the value of what should be done and what should not be from the standpoint of business. It helps overcoming the issues related to organization safety standards, working environment and employee’s privacy as well. In support, moral principles come forward to outline a framework for business ethics including fair use of laws and policies emerged in organizations and proper use of resources. Moreover, fraud and corruption in organization being a situation, has been selected to identify the ethical dimensions. Cultural, traditional, personal, organizational, fair or unfair dimensions came into view based on situation. Further, study presented that in many situations, acts of corruption or fraud is accepted and justified either on the basis of the profit they make for individual.
Furthermore, the study covered personal ethical aspect of that situation in business structure. It stated that individual’s personal excess of desire to get more out of the business becomes the reason for such immoral actions. Somehow, personal unethical role of an individual shows the vast majority of cases including money involvement, individual’s engagement in corruption for financial benefits, either directly or indirectly. Next, report talked about the organizational ethics including their incentive and reward structures enforcing the employee performing such activities. This discussion brings a few things forward taking these dimensions into consideration that adhere to business ethics standards. One is the right selection of human resources and then to be able to utilize the opportunities. A conclusion can be drawn that somewhere in all this there is in people’s minds collectively some point where acceptable corruption or fraud turns unacceptable when their endurance gives out and they take to the streets anyway. Essay also highlighted the importance of business ethics in order to operate and manage the business. It stated that it helps avoiding the conflicts and interest, it create the responsibility and induces staff to work in cohesion.
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