ETHICAL ANALYSIS AND BUSINESS ETHICS(26/07/12)
Today's lecturer started off with the 5 steps of Ethical analysis which includes the following
step 1 - Identify stakeholders involve in ethical issue and the facts pertaining to the issue.
step 2 - Define the conflict or dilemma and identify the higher order values involved
step 3 - Identify the stakeholders
step 4 - Identify the actions you can take which are reasonable
step 5 - identify the potential consequences of your options.
After the discussion about the above next we moved into the topic of business ethics
What is business Ethics?
Business ethics are moral principles that guide the way a business behaves. It is the same principle that determine an individual's actions also apply to business. In simple terms business ethics check whether the operations that business perform its right and wrong activities.
Two main characteristics of Business ethics
- Tells people what they ought to do
- Set of principles or rules
The discussion led to a very important topic called Concepts of Ethics. There are 4
- Relativism
- Egoism
- Utilitarianism
- Deontologism
Each of the above concepts should be evaluated because each has its own problems.
Relativism
This concepts states that there is no universal standard or guidelines.
example: what is correct in one society may be wrong for another. There are few problems in this concept such as There are no absolutes - Rape, murder, slavery, Torture also it leads to a conclusion that everyone's opinion is correct.
Egoism
According to this concept it says that one should act in his or her own self interest. It doesn't strictly say to obey the law if the person likes to follow the law he or she can follow it. This is also one of the main problems in this Concept. The reason is if the person has a unethical interest it will be harmful for the society as well as to the individual.
Utilitarianism
This concept states that the morality of an action can be determined by its consequences. In the concept the action is ethical if it promotes the greatest good for the greatest number.
example - Harry Truman made a decision to bomb japan by launching Hiroshima bomb and still there are Japanese victims who face bad experiences however this action ended the world war 2 which is a good result happen from the bad action.
Deontologism
In this concept it says that actions are not justified by their consequences. Here you determined the rightness of the action.
Reflection for today's Lecture
Today we learnt a very important lecture about business ethics and the concepts of ethics which extended from the previous lecture. now i have a better idea about what ethics are which i didn't have before. Business ethics will be more useful to us once we go into the business world as employees it will help us to engage in ethical operations and to guarantee professionalism. The lecture was concluded by giving us a simple activity to decide whether a particular action is ethical or not. Finally we were asked to do the test on actions of 30 individuals and told us to give comments based on the result.
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