“To educate a person in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace

to the society”-Teddy Roosevelt

BUSINESS ETHICSPresented by: Kashaf Saleem

http://www.bized.co.uk

Copyright 2007 – Biz/ed

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Ethics and the Law

• Law often represents an ethical minimum• Ethics often represents a standard that

exceeds the legal minimum

Ethics Law

Frequent Overlap

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Four Important Ethical Questions

• What is?

• What ought to be?

• How to we get from what is to what ought to be?

• What is our motivation for acting ethically?

Why ethics is important in business?

• Gain the goodwill of the community

• Increase the lifetime of an organization

• Produce safe and effective products

• Provide excellent service & Maintain customers 

• Develop and maintain strong employee relations

• Enjoy better employee morale

Business Ethical Challenges

Conflict of Interest Have two interests - cannot purse one without having negative impact on

other

Whistle Blowing

• Act of disclosing wrongdoing in an organization • Blowing a whistle to call attention to a thief

• When is it ethical to reveal wrongdoing ?

• When is it ethical to remain silent?

• Consequences?

Truth vs. Loyalty

• Spill the truth?

• Stay loyal to the company?

Responsibilities of the Business

Major Corporate Stakeholders

Responsibilities towards Stakeholders• Shareholders – Generate profits. Pay dividends

• Customers – Good quality products at reasonable prices. Safety, honesty, decency.

• Employees – health and safety at work, security, fair pay

• Suppliers – pay on time, fair rates, security

• Local Community – provide employment, safe working environment, minimise pollution.

• Government – abide by the law, pay taxes, abide by regulations

• Management – their aims versus those of the organisation as a whole

• Environment – limit pollution, congestion, environmental degradation, development, etc.

What helps you identify an ethical issue?

Do you have complete information to understand the

problem?

Ethical Approaches• Utilitarian Approach - which action

results in the most good and least harm?

• Rights Based Approach - which action respects the rights of everyone involved?

• Fairness or Justice Approach - which action treats people fairly?

• Common Good Approach - which action contributes most to the quality of life of the people affected?

• Virtue Approach - which action embodies the character strengths you value?

How to evaluate morality of actions?  

• Harms test : Do the benefits outweigh the harms, short term and long term?

• Reversibility test : Would I still think this choice is good if I traded places?

• Legality test : Would this choice violate a law or a policy of my employer?

• Colleague test : What would professional colleagues say?

• Wise relative test : What would my wise old aunt or uncle do?

• Mirror test : Would I feel proud of myself when I look into the mirror afterward?

• Publicity test : How would this choice look on the front page of a newspaper?

Hear no evil, See no evil, Speak no evil !