Business Ethics
Corporate fraud has grabbed national headlines repeatedly in the last year. Although, Enron and World Com are two of the highest profile cases of corporate scam, ethics in the business world are generally deplorable. One of the most morally reprehensible cases to hit the newspapers in the past several years is that of Robert R. Courtney. His sense of business and personal ethics reflects moral depravity at its darkest moment. What he did was evil on both a business and certainly on a personal level. As a pharmacist, he was entrusted by patients, oncologists, and major drug companies, to fill prescriptions for cancer patients. He defied and denied this trust. Apparently he owed the IRS $600,000, and ironically
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Courtney violated this theory. What he did in essence was to cruelly twist the theory of utilitarianism by delivering the greatest harm to the most people he could. He had it turned around and was apparently not concerned with how his greedy, short-sighted , and immoral behavior was affecting others. Although this theory gives latitude to individual definitions of “good”, Courtney ‘s manipulation of good and evil, right and wrong could not be justified on any level.
Immanuel Kant posed a different framework from which ethics evolve. He supposed that actions spring from a person’s sense of duty. Is it possible Robert Courtney felt his duty to the IRS and to his local church was more important than his professional duty to dying cancer patients? Courtney’s duty as pharmacist should have prevailed and kept him from doing what he did. Both teleological and deontological theories emphasize dignity and respect. Robert Courtney violated each of these theories. In the beginning, regardless of his actions being accidental or deliberate, the pharmacist must have contemplated his own sensibilities and moral convictions. Supposing that Robert R. Courtney had never developed any moral character, rules governing pharmacists’ behavior prohibit what he did. It was his duty to take these rules into account and abide by them, when in fact Courtney did the exact opposite. He defied personal and professional
In the film Extreme Measures, right off the bat, you see that Dr. Luthan is put in a tough situation that involves two patients and only one surgical room available. He is forced to make a decision within a couple of seconds on who gets to be treated first. Luthan ends up picking the police officer that was shot rather than the man who shot him, even though he was in worse condition. Dr. Luthan was told after he made this decision that he, “... made a moral choice, not a medical one.” by Jodi the nurse. I find that his actions fit best with Kant’s views on deontological reasoning, meaning that he judges the principles of the situation and acts based on obligations
What is principle of justice in acquisition? Our book gives us an analogy concerning basketball player, Wilt Chamberlain that was used by Nozick. The idea
an action can't be right if the people who are made happy by it are outnumbered by the people who are made unhappy by it.
Being a business major, most of our class are either learning the ethics and being civil in business from being managers to CEO’s, or tips on how to look at financial statements and balance sheets all day without being bored. However, it also shows us the civility and incivility side of business through some courses which revolve around managing. My concentration is management, and most of the classes I have taken show how being a manager can either go civil or uncivil, depending on how you lead your company and employees. One of these classes, fundamentals of management, taught by Dr. Nadia Novotorova, has shown a lot on how civility and incivility can change the way your company works in numerous ways.
John Stuart Mill opens his utilitarian postulation by asserting that ethical statements cannot be subjected to scientific or mathematical provability (West 23). Mill’s utilitarianism is the moral standpoint that views actions as right or wrong in proportion to how they advance happiness or pleasure (Bailey 23). By maximizing
Company X requires its employees to dress and maintain a clean, professional appearance. The employees of Company X represent this company and it is important that their appearance is professional. All staff members are expected to present themselves in an acceptable appearance to our team, clients, and the public. Supervisors are required to assist Company X in monitoring its employee’s appearance.
Kant provides us with these ethical guidelines however there are cases in medicine which illustrate that a physician’s expertise allows him to see that following a patient’s autonomous decision may lead to further suffering causing the health professional to take a paternalistic course of action. This ethical problem has lead me to investigate whether medical practice should uphold Kant’s categorical imperative, and if not where should we search for a way forward? I intend to analyse Kant’s ethics to see where its strengths and weaknesses lie when applied to the medical field before exploring other ethical theories in an attempt to find the most suitable means of decision making in medicine. I will use case studies to illustrate the point that Kant’s ethics, although perfect for an ideal world, does not work in the medical field, nor does a utilitarian approach. This leads us toward an intuitionist stance in order to keep the benefits of the categorical imperative offers us while maintaining applicability to medicine.
All of the following are considered exceptions to the general rule that there is no duty to rescue except:
When considering corporate American and its business crisis of integrity many people seem to cerebrate that ethics is mainly about staying out of trouble. Any explication they give concerning the role of ethics in business today will ineluctably feature a discussion of compliance, licit liability, and the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. The great cogitators of the past had a very divergent perspective. Ethics is not mainly about staying out of trouble. It’s about engendering vigor: vigor in individuals, in organizations, and in relationships with clients and suppliers.
Ethics and moral obligation are something that we all encounter at one time or another. Even in a professional setting, all persons should act in a manner that would uphold the good of society. Why is it that good, ethical and moral behavior is not always adhered to? Is it because some people do not understand ethics and what it means to be ethical? To be ethical, one has to decide between right and wrong, determine what is for the betterment of society and act accordingly. Ethics have three basic criteria that must be met obligations, moral ideas, and consequences (Ruggiero, 2004). Businesses have their own code of ethics and the individuals within that business have to determine
Ethics relates to given principles that govern behavior and conduct of a human being. Business ethics on the other hand is the code of a conduct that a company or an organization abides to in the day to day operations with the public (Conjecture Corporation, 2011). Making profits and high volume sales should not be the only goal of a business, a good reputation to the public is also very important for the survival of a company. This has led to companies formulating their code of ethics for employees to adapt. Consequences are also stipulated for those who defy these ethical codes and company guidelines. The world of electronic commerce (e-commerce) has also started articulating the same concerning unethical
The concept of business ethics has tried to change the way businesses operate over the years. Business ethics is a form of ethics that governs the actions of businesses to circumvent the affects business has on every day society. But some question its effectiveness in the application of capitalism. Several case studies have shown that this is the case; many companies place the pursuit of money in front of the pursuit of virtue. Although, the majority of companies are not in the spotlight of acting unethically, can we conclude that they follow the ethical norms? It is natural for normal human beings to act ethical but businesses are on a completely different playing field. But could business ethics be clearly possible in capitalism?
The purpose of this paper is to assess an article written by William Cohen (2009) which outlines Peter Drucker’s description of the role of social responsibility in business organizations and society. This paper will compare similarities and differences between Cohen’s perspective on social responsibility to the social responsibility and business ethics theories of Drucker and Milton Friedman. Furthermore, this paper will provide a frame of reference on corporate social responsibility and business ethics presented in other research.
When conducting a business proposition whether locally or in another country ethics will always have an impact on the decision to be made, ethics makes up the majority of how individuals feel about whether or not they are willing to accept or reject the decisions to do business. As we discuss the ethical perspectives or business ethics of a foreign country it will show how and what is the difference.
The non-consequentialist, deontological[3] approach of the former sees moral importance inhered in the principle (motive) of the action (a good in itself) via our rationality – consequences are immaterial. Whilst the consequentialist, teleological[4] basis for the latter provides that the consequences of the action are determinant of their morality - motives matter only insofar as they are conducive to maximising happiness (a good in itself). I’ll now outline each in turn.