Business Ethics 1
Business Ethics Overview
- Business ethics refers to the moral principles that guide the way a business behaves.
- It covers a broad range of topics including corporate social responsibility (CSR), whistle-blowing, discrimination, advertising and globalisation.
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
- CSR refers to the idea that businesses should act in a way that benefits society.
- This might involve ethical sourcing of materials, fair treatment of staff and minimising environmental impact.
- Christians tend to support CSR, seeing it as a form of stewardship over God’s creation.
- Kantian ethics would also support CSR as treating staff fairly involves treating them as an end in themselves and not merely a means to an end.
Whistle-blowing
- Whistle-blowing involves exposing wrongful activities within an organisation.
- It raises ethical issues relating to loyalty, honesty and fear of repercussion.
- Utilitarian viewpoint would assess whistle-blowing in terms of greatest happiness for the greatest number - if blowing the whistle leads to overall positive outcomes, then it would be seen as the right thing to do.
- A religious ethic might support whistle-blowing even at risk to the individual, valuing truth and justice over personal security.
Discrimination
- Discrimination involves treating people differently based on characteristics such as gender, race or religion.
- Businesses have a duty to avoid discrimination and promote equality.
- A human rights approach (based on Kant’s ethics) would clearly oppose discrimination which goes against the principle of treating everyone as an end in themselves.
- Many religious ethics, such as Christianity, strongly condemn discrimination, promoting love and respect for all.
Advertising
- Advertising involves promoting a product or service, but can raise ethical issues like deceptive marketing or promoting harmful products.
- Utilitarian ethics might approve of advertising if it brings greater happiness (as long as it’s not misleading).
- However, a Virtue Ethics approach would argue for truthful advertising, irrespective of the potential benefits of dishonesty.
Globalisation
- Globalisation involves companies operating on a worldwide scale which can bring benefits to both economy and consumers.
- However, it can also exploit workers in developing countries and harm the environment.
- Utilitarian ethics would likely see the overall benefits of globalisation outweighing the negatives, but a rights-based approach would focus on the harm caused to the exploited workers.