Abbey Bartosiak
Final Paper
Wednesday, December 10th, 2008

Businesses and Ethics: They’re Surely Not Your Top Running Candidate for “The Golden Rule”

The Golden Rule is a rule that is universally known. Although it has been translated differently and all the words may not be the same, it has the same universal meaning: “Do to others what you would want done to yourself.” This rule is one of the few rules that every person is the world is taught and abides (or tries to abide) by in their everyday life. When young children learn this rule, they are told to never forget it and to use it for the rest of their life: through school, for families, for work. There becomes a gray area, though, when The Golden Rule is brought into the workplace. For some reason, offices and workers feel that this rule doesn’t apply to them. They don’t need to be honest because, in some way, they are benefitting themselves. Business is where The Golden Rule gets tossed and people and firms start to act out of egoism, a form of moral belief. To uncover the “how, where and why” of business ethics, one must explore deeper beyond the surface. First, to understand how big businesses violate ethics, one must know what business ethics are and what they consist of. Second, to understand how businesses and workers act of out egoism, one must know what egoism is and what the beliefs pertain to. Then, connections and examples of businesses violating their ethics and how this unites it with egoism must be found to give a solid foundation for the argument. Finally, after all the connections and ties have been uncovered, one must figure out why businesses are doing such deeds. Of course it is easy to find the definition of ethics; look it up in the dictionary. To define business ethics is a little trickier; they are not grouped together in the dictionary. The Merriam Webster