ETHICS

Ethics

Ethics

Introduction

The world of business is the world of contradiction, and thus you can find in this world success and failure, dishonesty and honesty, loyalty and treason and so on. In business there are two main styles, capitalism and socialism. Admittedly, they have a great influence on the employees, managers and owners behaviour. Nowadays, business ethics has become a significant subject all over the world. In fact, this not only because of the importance of morals as part of people's lives, but also because unethical behaviour in business can lead to numerous economical, social and political problems such as suicide, unemployment, bankruptcy, price rises, level of living deteriorating, economic recession, etc. Now, what does business mean? What do ethics mean? What does business ethics mean? Why are ethics important and useful in business? What is unethical behaviour in business?

Definition

Briefly, business means an activity in your life that you do to earn money for livelihood or gain, for instance, producing, buying, selling goods, or providing services for people or companies. Partly, ethics means a collection of ideas and rules which influences the behaviour of people. So, the definition of ethics is different from one country to another based on the ideas of right and wrong in each country. Now, what does business ethics mean?

In a few words it means applying the moral rules in work and business.

The Importance of Business Ethics

In fact, there are many advantageous of applying ethics in business. The following are some of these advantageous:

First, to encourage cooperation between companies; second, the realization of stability in the society. Also, according to Velasquez (1998), when employees feel that their company's decision-making processes are just, they will show high levels of loyalty, confidence, obedience, honesty and they will do the work earnestly for the benefit of their company. Furthermore, there is a decrease in the number of crimes particularly financial crime .

Unethical Behaviour in Business

'It is widely believed that acting is in the interest of business, and thus prudence seems to be a strong motive for acting ethically. However, throughout this text we will repeatedly see that prudence often dictates a different business decision than doe's morality' (Tom, B and Norman, B 2001 P 4)

Without any doubt the world of business has many negative acts for example, monopolies, cheating, illegal competition and the mistreatment of staff.

Yes, it is possible to succeed through ignoring business ethics. But the most important question is until when will this success continue?

Personally, I believe that this success is very weak. It is like a big building without a strong basis therefore, it is liable to collapse at any moment. The following are some unethical business practices:

Monopoly

Monopoly, partly it means a complete control of business by one company so that other organizations and companies cannot compete with it. In fact this is a grave situation because it leads to price rise and domination of the economy and that definitely has unfavourable affects on the consumer. Nevertheless, because the way of applying ethics in business is different from one ...