Business%20Ethics:%20Assigned%20Articles

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Business EthicsAssigned Articles

• Day 2 discussion

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Summary

• Ethical decisions
• Are varied
• Occur at different levels of an organization
• Can have negative consequences
• Ethical involve trade-offs
• Personal gain
• Consequences on stakeholder(s)

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Ethical Decision Making

• We applied the model on p.88
• Attempted to clarify what the decisions were
• Who were stakeholders and their interests
• How were stakeholders affected
• What were available alternatives
• We did not identify what additional information
  or facts could have helped us make a better
  evaluation.

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Ethical Theories

• The articles gave us opportunities to see how
  these theories can be applied. For example
• What were consequences actions on customers?
• Rights of competitors?
• What are duties of individuals involved?
• What should have been the right thing to do?

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Influence of Organizational Culture

• How can these decisions have been made?
• What are likely influences on individuals?
  (Greed is an all encompassing, but simplistic
  answer. We need to understand how to prevent or
  avoid these decisions within an organizational
  context.)

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Towards an Ethical Culture

• On a sheet of paper what can a well-intentioned
  CEO do to create an Ethical Culture?

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Corporate Social Responsibility

• Do you agree with Milton Freedman, that the
  pursuit of profits contributes to societys good?
• What do three models say?
• Corporate citizenship
• Social contract
• Enlightened self interest
• Is it all about reputation management?

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The following slides are what I intended to use
to in my conclusion in todays class. These can
also be found in the file containing Chapter 5
notes.
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What should a business do?

• Business has the social responsibility to obey
  the law.
• Philosophers would contend that we have
  responsibilities beyond the law and they
  distinguish between different types of
  responsibilities, on a scale from more to less
  demanding and binding.
• First, we have responsibilities not to cause harm
  to others.
• A second, perhaps less binding responsibility, is
  to prevent harm even in those cases where one is
  not the cause.
• Finally, there might be responsibilities to do
  good.

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Philosophical priorities in CSR

• Do good
• Maximize economic, social
• and environmental value
• Do no harm
• Even in those cases
• where one is not the cause
• Do no harm
• Avoid economic, environmental and social harm

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Corporate Responsibilities

• Even when not explicitly prohibited by law,
  ethics would demand that we not cause avoidable
  harm. In practice, this ethical requirement is
  very close to responsibilities established by the
  precedents of tort law.
• Beyond the responsibility to obey the law, a
  second level of responsibilities would hold that
  business has a social responsibility not to
  violate anyones rights.
• But there are also cases in which business is not
  causing harms, but could easily prevent harms
  from occurring. A more inclusive understanding
  of corporate social responsibility would hold
  that business has a responsibility to prevent
  harms.

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A Responsibility to Do Good?

• Perhaps the most wide-ranging standard of CSR
  would hold that business has a social
  responsibility to do good things and to make
  society a better place.
• Many of the debates surrounding corporate social
  responsibility involve the question of whether
  business really has a responsibility to support
  such good causes.
• Some people argue that, like all cases of
  charity, this is something that deserves praise
  and admiration, but it is not something that
  every business ought to do.