...(ESPN vs. OSU, 2011) (George, 2010) Ethical and Moral Issues in Business Timothy E. Shaw MGT/216 July-27, 2011 Ms. SHANNON MATHIS-ROBERTS Ethical and Moral Issues in Business Ethics and morals are rules on how we as individuals and as a society should follow. These rules, both written and implied, are how we are viewed and judged. This paper will discuss the differences between ethical issues and moral issues, the differences between personal ethics and business ethics, and show how a violation of these rules brought down one of the Goliaths of college football and caused a premature end to the era Jim Tressel at The Ohio State University. Ethics and morals are sometimes used interchangeably. Ethics is defined as a systematic attempt to make sense of our individual and social moral experience, in such a way as to determine the rules that ought to govern human conduct [ (George, 2010) ]. A moral is the distinction of right from wrong. The difference between the two is very slim and marginal. Morals are what define our personal character, whereas ethics lean on the side of how society is supposed to act [ (wisegeek) ]. As close as ethics and morals are, the margin of difference between personal ethics and business ethics is even more narrow. Business ethics is how people conduct themselves in the workplace and how the company produces goods or perform services to increase their overall worth and profits. Personal ethics are principles of good behavior and a moral...
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...Japan vs. United States: Ethical Norms Japan vs. United States: Ethical Norms This paper is about the ethical norms of Japan and the United States. The Japanese culture is very complex as well as their corporate culture. Japan’s government us unitary state, constitutional monarchy, parliamentary system. The United States culture is primarily western and corporate culture is considerably fragmented. The different factors within both cultures have an impact on both countries’ ethical norms. Japanese corporations can be contrasted to American corporations which stress the interests of stockholders and are more likely to emphasize short term goals. Leadership is a term that emphasizes three characteristics which are the human trait requited, to coordinate interests of the group, and towards the group’s goals (Taka & Foglia, 1994). Effective leaders maintain integrity and trust by communicating clearly, leading by example and fostering positive relationships with sponsors, stakeholders, suppliers and employees. When leaders establish a strong commitment to ethical behavior and demand that all employees adhere to a high standard of business conduct, confidence in the company tends to be high. When leaders show disregard for the rules, morale, productivity, and overall success suffer in the long-run. The problem of when and how to adapt to different ethical standards is best approached by examining two sets of issues: those faced by Americans doing business in Japan, and...
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...Lowry vs. Walmart Learning Team A Com/295 June 6, 2016 Lowry vs. Walmart There are times when people do not feel right about a given situation and are compelled to disclose this information to the company, but this time, it did not turn out in the employees favor. "But I acted in good faith, just pointing out that there might have been some wrongdoing," said Lowry. During her day-long orientation that focused mainly on ethics, she was instructed what to do if someone had an idea that there was something unethical going on. Lowry now finds herself looking for a job so that she can continue to support her two children. This is not the first time Wal-Mart has been under scrutiny for controversial Ethics Violations or Defamation of Character suits. She should not be forced out of her position. According to "To Whom Does an Ethical Business Owe a Responsibility" (2004), four groups of people are generally responsible for the success of a business: Employees, customers, the community, and shareholders". In Wal-Mart vs. Lowry, Wal-Mart has an obligation to their employee. Why send her through the process of having to apply for a position in another department when she is already and employee? This is not only unfair to their employee but unjust. This unethical matter is now a public matter. Knowing how Wal-Mart has treated their own, who was only looking out for the company, does not look good to dedicated consumers. Wal-Mart has an obligation to...
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...culture is the ethics found in different countries. Although, many different countries share views on the ethics of business, there still are many significant differences in opinion found among different countries' opinions regarding business ethics. There were many tests and samples done in South Africa, Turkey, Israel, USA, Western Australia that were compared to more recent studies done in Jamaica, and the West Indies. Researchers compared the countries' cultures using Hofstede's four dimensions of National culture: power distance, collectivist vs individualist, femininity vs masculinity, and uncertain avoidance. The researchers then gathered employee attitudes towards business ethics from a sample of people in each country. Some examples of things on the questionnaire are “The only moral of business is making money” or “I view sick days as vacation days that I deserve” etc. The results suggested that the people in Jamaica and West Indies had similar views on business ethics to those living in Western Australia. Taking it a step further, they found that both Australia and Jamaica scored moderately on power distance and on masculine culture. USA culture received a score similar to the Australian culture on all four of Hofstede's dimensions, yet Jamaica's attitudes of business ethics were extremely different towards the attitudes of those in USA. This shows that Hofstede's dimensions of national culture doesn't include the attitudes towards business ethics. The Turkish...
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...while running a business. It is the social responsibility of the company to produce good quality products, to be good community citizens, have safe work environment for the workers etc. In short the company should not only think about its profit, it should also think about the employees and their consumers and shareholders. Usually the company face challenge of environment. They need to provide such an environment to the employees that satisfy them means safe work environment, extra technology, proper pay and their other needs. It is company social responsibility to give such an environment. Most of the companies don’t bother to think about its employees, they just take so much hard work from them and in return they don’t even pay that much. And another challenge that a company may face is labor vs. profit. The companies just keep an eye on their profit, they don’t care about how employees are working and what they need. So, as such appoint labor don’t want to work in such environment. Arising from the social justice movement of the 1960’s, companies found that it is good to serve the people and in that case they start offering for the health benefits to their employees to provide sanitary and safe work environments. By taking right management decision companies can even get more profit and their reputation in community will increase. Business has found that Good ethics doesn’t happen automatically. Ethisphere has developed a methodology to examines codes of ethics, companies and...
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...Management Of Ethics And Corporate Social Responsibility Issues In Public Relations INTRODUCTION At multiple points in their careers, public relations (PR) practitioners are likely to face decisions that are ethical in nature. Such decisions reflect a range of ethical dilemmas between, for example, truth vs. loyalty, justice vs. mercy, short-term vs. long-term consequences, and the individual vs. the collective (Kidder 1995, p. 18; Stacks & Wright 1989, pp. 53-67). Public relations practitioners, by nature of their position and job responsibilities, are often in a crossroad of a range of competing interests. Often, the tension may be between the practitioner’s own values and the culture of the organization. In other cases, it may be a conflict between the practitioner’s professional code of ethics and organizational norms and expectations. In yet other circumstances, they may be faced with competing interests between the organization and its various publics. At the very least, practitioners will frequently confront contradictions between business demands for economic performance and public expectations for ethical conduct. Concerns over these competing responsibilities and the ethical dilemmas they produce for public relations are the subject of this essay. In it, a range of challenges faced by public relations practitioners related to issues of ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR) are explored. It is argued that CSR has, in many respects, altered the expectations...
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...Exploitation of illegal immigrants. * Violation of state regulation, requiring time for breaks and meals. An internal audit of Walmart for one week of time record indicated the following: * 60,767 missed breaks * 15,705 lost meal times * 1,371 instances of minors working long hours or during school hours. Despite the knowledge of this violation's by the management, they still continued to take place till someone filed a lawsuit against the organization. Since 1999 Walmart has settled multiple lawsuits amounting in excess of $500 million. Even with these lawsuits the company hasn't changed the way it handles the employee issues. As of now Walmart has 76 wages, hour and overtime cases still pending against them. Women Vs Wal-Mart Betty Dukes Vs Walmart, which is considered to be the largest class action lawsuit in history. * Started with Betty Dukes and 5 other women suing Wal-Mart in 2001 * 1.5 million women are suing Wal-Mart for gender discrimination in management hiring practice and difference in wages (Mcnamara, 2005) * In its 6 to 5 ruling the U.S Court of appeals and...
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...Business Ethics and Corporate Responsibility Introduction Corporate Responsibility or Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been a term coined in the previous century in order to define the social responsibilities of corporate heads and their corporations in securing the trust of its community by determining and fulfilling its roles towards the betterment of society. Simply following the rules set down by legislation would not do; corporate authorities and workers alike were demanded to be ethically inclined and considerate of how their actions affect society in general, both as residents and providers within their immediate communities. But both ethics and responsibility are vague terms, and prior to the 19th to 20th centuries, neither of them has been attached to business entities like corporations. Business ethics and corporate responsibilities, then, are much vaguer terms in that they entail more than simple and faithful provision of goods and services to people; some may even think that corporate giants and ethics do not exactly go together, or even share a superficial partnership. But these revolutionary concepts have played a major role in redefining corporations in the 21st century; these conceptual standards remain strong factors towards corporate determination of company action and assessment of overall company performance today. This paper will discuss business ethics and corporate responsibilities as sister terms, but also as discrete concepts, both of which...
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...Preferred Letter Code of Business Brochure Title Alternate Letter Ethics: Brochure Title Our Core Values in Action Alternate Letter Brochure Title Alternate Letter Brochure Title Our Code of Business Ethics reinforces our core values and drives our culture of compliance, ethical decision making and accountability. Our core values shape the culture and define the character of our company. They guide how we behave and make decisions. Accenture will not tolerate retaliation against any employee who raises an issue or uses its Business Ethics Line (or any other appropriate channel) to report an ethical or legal concern. Employees who come forward with concerns play an important role in maintaining our ethical workplace and high-performance business. Contents Page 3 Page 6 Page 8 Page 11 Page 14 Page 17 Page 20 Page 25 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 How to Use the Code of Business Ethics: Our Core Values in Action Our Code at a Glance Client Value Creation One Global Network Respect for the Individual Best People Integrity Stewardship The Five Cs A Model for Making Ethical Decisions Responsibilities Index of Key Terms Visit the Accenture Business Ethics Line Visit the Code of Business Ethics website 2 | Accenture Code of Business Ethics How to Use the Code of Business Ethics: Our Core Values in Action Our Code is built on a foundation of our core values, illuminated by "action statements." Action statements describe the behaviors we seek and “key ideas” provide...
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...NORTHCENTRAL UNIVERSITY ASSIGNMENT COVER SHEET Learner: | | MGT7019 | Stephanie Lyncheski | | | Ethics in Business | Assignment 1 Paper- Ethical perspectives: Friedman vs. Drucker, Murphy | | | ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- Faculty Use Only ------------------------------------------------- <Faculty comments here> ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- <Faculty Name> <Grade Earned> <Writing Score> <Date Graded> Running head: ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES Assignment 1 - Ethical Perspectives Friedman vs. Drucker, Murphy Northcentral university MGT7019-8 Ethics in Business 05/20/2012 With no clear definition of what business ethics are, it becomes the responsibility of the beholder to discern or reach a plausible conclusion of what constitutes ethical behavior. When looking at business ethics from a global perspective the water only gets muddier. Studies and perspectives on the subject provide no clear definition and when western and eastern social values are added in the mix, the gap between doing what is ethical and doing what is right stretches the abyss even further. Doing what...
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...Ethical perspectives: Friedman vs. Drucker, Murphy North Central University Summary of Perspectives Peter F. Drucker In Drucker (1981), he takes us through a journey of evolution of Business Ethics and represents several controversial positions. While explaining the ethics in Western Culture he states that there was agreement on the following statement: “There are only one ethics, one set of rules of morality, one code, that of individual behavior in which the same rules apply to everyone alike” (Drucker, 1981, Page 19). He discusses the examples of "a poor mother", "nepotism in China" and "paid extortion" to articulated the impact of social, economical and cultural norms on implementing this on everyone. He considers practices of questionable morality under different circumstances as ethical. Casuistry (Drucker, 1981, Page 22) was the first attempt to think about social responsibility and embed it in a set of distinctive ethics for people in power. According to Drucker, ethics for people in social responsibility is a cross-benefit calculation involving demand of individual conscience and position. For then, demand of ethics can be excepted if actions result in benefit for other people. Drucker then moves on to introduce The Ethics of Prudence (Drucker, 1981, Page 27) as other major tradition in the West. He proposes that Ethics of Prudence appropriate to a society of organizations. Prudence, the consciousness not to do the wrong thing will enable the leader to exhibit...
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...3/21/2015 Dr. Truong Thi Nam Thang Associate Professor Centre Franco-Vietnamien de Formation a la Gestion National Economics University, Vietnam Main concepts Social Entrepreneurship • value creation vs value capture Corporate Social Responsibilities Responsibilities of firm to balance 3P Minizing negative and maximizing positive impacts on society Business Ethics Norms guiding and regulating behaviors right-wrong, acceptable-unacceptable Corporate Governance Procedures, mechanisms to make sure suppliers of finance get return on investment 1 3/21/2015 Govern ment The Media Owner s Directo rs Employ ees Primary Secondary Internal Custo mers/C onsum ers Educati onal instituti ons External Society Stakeholder model Lender s/credit ors NGOs Supplie rs Service profess ionals Compe titors Busine ss organis ation Dealer s/distri butors 2 3/21/2015 Potential Ethical Implications in Business Operations OWNERS Reporting Minority shareholders Fair dividends EMPLOYEES Hiring practices Firing practices Wages & working conditions Private lives vs company lives Discrimination Honesty Unions Conflicts of interests Secrecy & espionage CONSUMERS & CUSTOMERS Advertising Packaging Product safety Deception, overselling Price fixing discriminatory pricing Collusion with competitors COMPETITORS Price fixing Unfair competition Pricing below cost Stealing personnel Industrial espionage GOVERNMENT Laws compliance Political...
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...trend of globalism, the outsourcing of manufacturing, the closing of mom & pop stores and independent grocers on Wal-Mart. But the question that must be asked is as follows: Is Wal-Mart really to blame for all the things that they are being accused of? After all, aren’t the consumers fueling Wal-Mart’s position as the number one retailer in the world by their constant search for the lowest possible price? And don’t we have a choice as to where we should shop and isn’t it our responsibility to avoid businesses that we deem are unethical? Is Wal-Mart unethical or are they just misunderstood? Background Wal-Mart has been forced to defend itself against several lawsuits that were filed against them. In the case; Cynthia Haddad vs. Wal-Mart stores, Inc. Wal-Mart was found liable for unequal compensation and wrongful termination of employment based on gender. (This was just one of several lawsuits filed against Wal-Mart for discrimination). On December 23, 2008, Wal-Mart settled 63 wage and hour action lawsuits that Wal-Mart has been defending against for several years. Wal-Mart has...
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...intellectual contributions such as an engineer designing a new technology (p.7) Capital would be the financial resources companies use to conduct business. You need money to start making money and a lot is needed to start a business. Entrepreneurs are the people to launch new business ventures and accept all the risks associated with. They are innovative leaders who think outside the box. Physical resources would be the tangible things to conduct business (p8). Natural resources, parts, facilities, and equipment would be some examples. Informational resources would be the data used to conduct business. This is a new concept which was brought by the technology boom. These resources can help us in forecasting costs and predict market trends. Some businesses are designing solely on the data mining service. Is one factor more important than the other? If so which one? Why? This is a very tricky question. For my answer, I am basing my opinion on the United States economy. It does differ based on the country chosen. If I picked China, I would say their economy has a heavy importance on the labor factor. Their huge population and cheap labor causes companies from around the world to outsource their production to China. Until recently, China has also had government restrictions which hurt entrepreneurships and business startups. But back to my answer, you should view the factors of production like a chain. Each factor would be a link and if one failed, the whole...
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...Business vs. Ethics: The India Tradeoff?: Knowledge@Wharton (http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2897) Business vs. Ethics: The India Tradeoff? Published : January 03, 2012 in Knowledge@Wharton As Ratan Tata, chairman of the Tata Group, observed, "If you choose not to participate in [corruption], you leave behind a fair amount of business." Much has been written about the benefits of doing business in India -- low input costs, easy access to labor and a massive consumer base. Less has been said about the ability of companies in India to thrive by bending rules, greasing palms and broadening ethical boundaries. At a time when the issue of corruption threatens the stability of the Indian government and scandals unearthed in sectors from sports to telecommunications total tens of billions of dollars, it is becoming increasingly critical for multinational managers to ask whether business success in India comes at an ethical cost. This is a single/personal use copy of Knowledge@Wharton. For multiple copies, custom reprints, e-prints, posters or plaques, please contact PARS International: reprints@parsintl.com P. (212) 221-9595 x407. Following the 1991 fiscal reforms, India's growth story is entering its third decade in dramatic fashion. Annual growth bordering on double digits, a middle class set to grow eightfold in the coming two decades and 800 million mobile subscribers are but a few highlights of the narrative that has reshaped the global business...
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