Business Ethics And Environmental Management

Business Ethics and Environmental Management Dr. Ameeta Motwani October 2009

What is Ethics Ethics is the discipline that examines one's moral standards or the moral standards of a society. It asks how these standards apply to our lives and whether these standards are reasonable or unreasonable—that is, whether they are supported by good reasons or poor ones. Therefore, a person starts to do ethics when he or she takes the moral standards absorbed from family, church, and friends and asks: What do these standards imply for the situations in which I find myself? Do these standards really make sense? What are the reasons for or against these standards? Why should I continue to believe in them? What can be said in their favor and what can be said against them? Are they really reasonable for me to hold? Are their implications in this or that particular situation reasonable? The ultimate aim of ethics is to develop a body of moral standards that we feel are reasonable to hold—standards that we have thought about carefully and have decided are justified standards for us to accept and apply to the choices that fill our lives.

What is Business Ethics Business ethics is a specialized study of right and wrong applied to business policies, institutions, and behaviors. This is an important study since businesses are some of the most influential institutions within modern society. Business organizations are the primary economic institutions through which people in modern societies carry on the tasks of producing and distributing goods and services. They provide the fundamental structures within which the members of society combine their scarce resources—land, labor, capital, and technology—into usable goods, and they provide the channels through which these goods are distributed in the form of consumer products, employee salaries, investors' return, and government taxes. Today large corporate organizations dominate our economies. In 2003, General Motors, the world's largest automobile company, had revenues of $195.6 billion and employed more than 325,000 workers; Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, had sales of $258.7 billion and 1,400,000 employees; General Electric, the world's largest maker of electrical equipment, had sales of $134 billion and 305,000 employees; and IBM, the world's largest computer company, had revenues of $89 billion and 319,000 employees.'

Why Business should bother about Ethics? • Self Interest: unethical conduct may cost fines, loss of business and reputation • Business has moral duty that extends beyond serving the interests of owners • Social Contract Theory: conflicting interests are best resolved by formulating a ‘fair agreement’ between the parties

Ethical Issues • • • • • •

General Business Ethics Business Ethics and Accounting Ethics of Human Resource Management Ethics of Sales and Marketing Ethics of Production Ethics of Intellectual property, knowledge and skills • International Business ethics

General Business Ethics • Moral rights and duties between a company and its shareholders • Ethical issues concerning relations between different companies e.g. hostile take-overs, industrial espionage • Corporate Social Responsibility • Leadership issues such as transparency, democratisation and good corporate governance • Environmental Accountability

Business Ethics and Accounting • Creative Accounting and Earnings management Case Study: Enron • Fallout of unethical accounting practices

Ethics of Human Resource Management • Rights and duties owed between employers and employees • Discriminations Issues • Democratisation of the work place • Privacy of the employees: workplace surveillance, drug testing • Privacy of the employer: Whistle Blowing • Fairness of the employment contract • Occupational safety and health

Ethics of Sales and Marketing • Manipulation of values and behaviour: where do we draw the line? • Anti-competitive practices: manipulation of loyalty and supply chains, foreclosure of raw materials and critical inputs e.g. Cola companies • Pricing Strategies: price discrimination, cartelization e.g. OPEC • Social Issues: content of Advertisement, black markets and grey markets

Ethics of Production • Harmful products and production processes e.g. environmental pollution Case Studies: Pesticides in colas, Bhopal Gas, Plachimada • Defective, addictive and inherently dangerous products: tobacco, guns • New techonologies e.g. GM foods, mobile phones • Product testing: animal testing

Ethics of Intellectual property, knowledge and skills • Ethical disputes over ownership: company who trains vs. employee, country of origin vs. company discovering medicinal plants • Patent, copyright and trademark infringement • Employee Poaching • Biopiracy e.g. neem, haldi

International Business Ethics • • • •

Cultural relativity of ethical values Fair trade: farmers in developing countries Sweat shops Local laws vs. domestic laws