ETHICS IN BUSINESS

Ethics in Business

Ethics in Business

Introduction

Society has lost faith in business integrity as fallout from widespread corporate scandals since the 1990s has affected the lives of literally millions of people. Citizens no longer trust businesses and business people to behave ethically. In spite of the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley in 2002 and the amendments to the U.S. Sentencing Commission's Federal Sentencing Guidelines for Organizations in 2004, as well as stepped-up attention to ethics training and education, more than half of the employees surveyed by the Ethics Resource Center (2008) had witnessed misconduct in their private-sector, nonprofit, and government workplaces within the past year. This paper will be discussing business ethics and will compare and contrast three articles by Milton Friedman, Peter F. Drucker, and Patrick E. Murphy. In the end of the paper we will provide opinion on the topic of social responsibility and business ethics.

Discussion

Business leaders, policy-makers, investors, consumers and other stakeholders are increasingly concerned about the vibrancy of the capital markets and their responsible delivery of products and services. Are bad business ethical practices threatening the American economic system? There is both good and bad news. The good news is; a) The number of formal ethics and compliance programs in corporations is on the rise, b) The companies that move beyond a singular commitment to just complying with laws and regulations and who adopt an enterprise wide ethical culture are dramatically reducing misconduct, and c) The characteristics that comprise an effective ethical culture can be identified.

The legal background obtained for the implementation of business ethics of particular importance if the American courts in the consideration involves. In violation of the law, not only the actors but also companies are subject to penalties, some delicate proportions of reach some 100 million U.S. dollars can. If companies can prove the other hand, that they have an effective system of business ethics management in order to deter such violations, the impending punishment in specific cases can be reduced up to 90% again. This is based on the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, a provision for the national standardization of sentencing, which in 1991 was awarded a chapter eight, which deals with a (stringent) Penalty tax for businesses (Chapter Eight: Sentencing of Organizations). As mitigating factors (mitigating factors) are:

the existence of standards and procedures that are appropriate to reduce unlawful behavior by employees;

the establishment of a responsible employee who supervises the program;

teaching these procedures and standards through publications and seminars employees;

The establishment of a reporting system to monitor compliance with the standards can and finally the evidence has implemented this program permanent. 

Corporate Social Responsibility:

The starting point for an independent role of business ethics was the allocation of social responsibility to the company. David Burch refers to an early publication of Peter F. Drucker (The Concept of the Corporation, 1946) in which this took the view that companies, especially in mass production have not only technical but also a social responsibility to its employees . Richard T. De George sees the beginnings of a discussion about ethics in business at the time of the ...