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Essay about Business Ethics

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What is ethics? Ethics can be defined as a set of principles used by an individual to govern his or her decisions in an effort to ensure fairness and equality. Business ethics, as defined by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is the applied ethics discipline that addresses the moral features of commercial activity. The same source also gives a history of business ethics which states that the concept as an academic principle is relatively young-only about forty years old; but in general is as old as trade itself. In this paper, the following aspects of ethics will be discussed: Ethical issues faced in business; recent trends in business ethics; international considerations in business ethics; quantitative techniques and ethics. …show more content…

As such, business people go to great lengths to protect the company’s ideas; even going so far as to require employees to sign confidentiality agreements. If an employee gives out confidential information, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, it has the potential to set the company back and cause them to lose money.
According to Miranda Morley in her article titled ‘What Are the Major Ethical Issues Businesses Face?’ Other issues faced are employee behavior, employee work conditions and supplier/customer relations. If, for example, a supervisor discriminated against an employee because off race, religion or gender it would be deemed unethical. It may also be seen as unethical for an employee to spend company time doing personal activities. In respect to employee work conditions, it is unethical for employers to subject employees to unsafe work areas; to not compensate employees adequately for the work done; or to require an employee to do an unusually difficult task or work unusually long hours. With regard to supplier/customer relations, business owners must consider whether it is ethical to do business with a supplier that has unethical practices. For example a clothing store must decide if they will continue to do business with a supplier who utilizes child labor. Businesses must also ensure that they do not falsely advertise products or services or produce anything sub-standard for clients.
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