Issues in General Business Ethics
Posted in Office Etiquette
Business ethics is an applied ethics that looks at ethical principles and ethical or moral dilemmas tackled in the business environment. The quantity and range of business ethical issues mirror the extent to which business is considered to be in conflict with non-economic social values. Below is an overview of issues in general business ethics.
HRM ethics
Human resource management ethics covers ethical issues concerning the employer-employee relationship, like the duties and rights owed between them. It involves issues of discrimination on the bases of gender, religion, race, age, disabilities, and physical appearance. There are also issues about the democratization of the workplace and representation of employees, such as strike breaking and union busting. Other ethical issues include drug testing, workplace surveillance, and whistle-blowing.
Accounting information ethics
Ethical issues include misleading financial analysis, forex scams, bucket shops, securities fraud, Insider trading, and excessive payments made to CEO's and top management. Facilitation payments, kickbacks, and bribery are other serious business ethical issues. While these practices may be in the interests of the companies and their shareholders, these activities are anti-competitive and offend societal values. Enron and WorldCom are two high-profile cases.
Production ethics
Production ethics relates to the duties of companies to ensure that production processes and products do not pose danger to workers and consumers. Ethical issues arise from the production of defective and inherently dangerous and addictive products and services (for example alcohol, tobacco, motor vehicles, weapons, chemicals, bungee jumping).
Pollution, carbon emissions trading, genetically modified crops, and use of humans and animals as test objects are other points of contention. The Ford Pinto scandal, Bhopal disaster, and the Peanut Corporation of America salmonella scandal are three famous cases.
Sales and marketing ethics
Marketing activities often manipulate consumer behavior and values. Ethical issues in this area include anti-competitive practices, pricing (price skimming, price discrimination, and price fixing), marketing strategies (bait and switch, greenwash, viral marketing, shill, spam mails, planned obsolescence, pyramid scheme), and content of advertisements (subliminal messages, attack ads, sex in advertising, harmful or "immoral" products).
