Perspectives on business ethics and values PDF

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Business environment

31/10/16

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Perspectives on business ethics and values Moral decision that faces profit seeking organisations - conflict between public duty and self interest. Should private profit seeking organisations behave in a socially responsible and moral way, beyond the requirements of law because it is the right thing to do or because it pays them to do so. Some behave in a responsible and ethical manner to make better returns on their organisation. Behave badly - lose the esteem and respect of its customers so lose sales and profitability. A poor image can counteract the huge spending to create a ‘brand’ image. Fair trade began in 1960’s. Benefits of good behaviour are not guaranteed. Some people will rate a good deal before a sense of being socially responsible. FTSE4Good: - Working towards environmental sustainability - Developing positive relationships with stakeholders - Upholding and supporting universal human rights. Companies have to meet these standards to comply with the international ethical standards. Giving attention to CSR can take companies eyes off their main objective: making money. This distraction of attention plus the factor that social projects can cost a lot can thus cause businesses financial performances to worsen as a result of acting ethically. As different people may be affected differently by the same action then it is important to take these various impacts, some good and some bad, into account. The simplest way of doing this is to use stakeholder theory. Moral agency within organisations is the ability of individuals to exercise moral judgement and behaviour in an autonomous fashion, unfettered by fear for their employment and or promotional prospects. A classical-liberal-economic approach - the firm places the organisation within an economic system that is made up of a myriad interconnecting but legally separate parts and where the relationships between these many parts are defined in terms of free exchange.

Business environment

31/10/16

Reading

Money acts as the facilitator for change. Objectivism: - Reason is man’s only means of knowledge - Rational self interest is the objective moral code - Laissez-faire capitalism is the objective social system The corporatist approach: Does not deny the primacy of competitive market forces but an exclusive equity shareholder perspective is eschewed in favour of the broader based set of perspectives in some of the organisations decision making. Additional perspectives include: employee representation, debt financiers and state interests. Loses short term efficiency The pluralist perspectives: Type A - sees broad stakeholder interests being represented by elected or appointed members of corporate boards. Type B - does not dispute the possibility of stakeholder groups being physically represented within the corporate decision making processes, but this is not part of basic arguments. Sees economic rationality being moderated by concerns for and the recognition of wider social implications of corporate decisions, with these decisions being weighed with individual decision makers. Deontological approach to moral behaviour is one that believes that moral reasoning and action should be guided by universal principles that hold irrespective of context in which an ethical dilemma might exist. Critical perspective: Descriptive theories Behavioural theorists are amoral in their stance. Critical theorists have an avowed commitment to societal change for the emancipation of employees. Walzer argued that societal life should be seen as a serie of spheres, which contain and constrain differing elements of societal existence. One of these spheres is economic, in which markets are recognised as the most effective mediating mechanism and competition as the most defensible form of organisational culture.

Business environment

31/10/16

Reading

From a moral perspective, it might suggest spheres are independent to the point of allowing differing forms of behaviour to prevail within each. Principles must fit within a single culture. Two ways of discussing ethical matters are normatively and descriptively. Normative discussion is concerned with rules and principles that ought to govern our thoughts and actions, how such prescriptive can be shown to be legitimate or valid. Descriptive discussion focuses on how things are rather than how they should be. Give account of the values and ethics of particular groups and try to explain how they have emerged. Integrity is one of the concepts that would form any definition of business ethics. More than just the presence of morality or the appropriation of values; integrity involves the process of seeing or creating values. Ethical moralism is blindly obedient....