Ethical and Legal aspects of Business Management
MGT/216
July 9, 2010

Ethical and Legal aspects of Business Management
With so many companies’s being subpoenaed to court for an array of ethical issues, Presidents and CEO’s are making an asserted effort to instill a set of proposed values and ethical beliefs into their prospective employees from the hiring process to termination. Business owners often choose to make the prospective employee agree to the adherence of their ethical value system before being brought on for work within the company and throughout the employee’s career at the company. Legally, an agreement of some sort between employer and employee must be reached regarding the expected ethical standard and companies go about “getting the message across” in different ways. Some company’s choose to do this beginning with the company’s website in the form of a mission statement or core value. Constant reminders throughout orientations are utilized. And sometimes, companies place the ethical standards into their policy handbook so that in the event that after being hired the ethical values and standards that are expected from each employee are laid out for them in black and white. No matter how a business chooses to do it companies must adhere to the nations compliance laws or face possible litigation. During the course of this paper a closer look at the legal aspects of Hiring, performance evaluations, discipline and terminations will take place as well as an analysis of the ethical issues that take place simultaneously during each process. To help illustrate the concept better, let’s use the Fed-Ex Ground Warehouse as an example and look at the way they treat their employees. At Fed-Ex an employee is first taken on a walk-thru of the warehouse so that a general idea of the job can be given to the employee. Now at various stages of the walk-thru