Can Ethics Be Taught in Business Schools? 0
Business Ethics can be defined as the study and evaluation of decision making by businesses according to moral concepts and judgments.
Ethical issues range from a company’s obligation to be honest with its customers to a company’s responsibility to preserve the environment and protect employee rights.
Ethics includes the need to produce a reasonable profit for the company’s shareholders with honesty in business practices, safety in the workplace, and larger environmental and social issues.
Business ethics calls for an awareness of social responsibility and this includes addressing social problems such as poverty, crime, environmental protection, equal rights, public health, and improving education.
Many multinational corporations operate in countries where bribery, sexual harassment, racial discrimination, and lack of concern for the environment are neither illegal nor unethical or unusual – all are the examples of Business Ethics.
Government efforts to encourage companies to adhere to ethical standards include President Clinton’s Model Business Principles (1995), in a program overseen by the Dept. of Commerce.
It has been wrongly assumed that the key to better behavior is modifying character.
The key to wrongdoing is much more likely to involve faulty ways of thinking about certain behaviors, namely thinking about them in ways that “neutralize” them, morally, effectively exempting the wrongdoer from moral blame.
Thus it’s not wrong in claiming that virtue cannot be taught. Read the rest of this entry →