A Level Religious Studies AQA

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.