Accounting System

Ethics in Business Environment

Ethics in Business Environment

Business ethics can be defined as written and unwritten codes of principles and values that govern decisions and actions within a company. In the business world, the organization’s culture sets standards for determining the difference between good and bad decision making and behavior.

There many universal ethical theories, but we can summarize the most famous theories as follows:

Utilitarianism says that decisions should be directed to provide the most benefit to the greatest number of people, with harm to none. 19th century philosopher John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism’s strongest advocate, wrote that “the creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, utility or the greatest happiness principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is meant intended pleasure and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure.” Most of us are utilitarian, at least at first, because we naturally focus on outcomes. But when pushed, we waffle: we agree that sometimes a lie is acceptable, where it seems to provide a benefit, but we are uncomfortable with the logical extension that lying is always acceptable. More importantly, applying Utilitarian thinking is difficult, because it requires that we look far afield – and exercise great personal judgment – as we consider who benefits and who is hurt by our decision.

If management looks to an outside source like Bible or the Quran or central figure for ethical guidelines, it will be known as ethical fundamentalism.

Deontology (or Universalism) is the idea that any decision we make today would be acceptable to everyone who had the same facts. Universalism looks less at outcomes and more at the process by which a decision is made.

Mousa 2

John Locke and Jean- Jacques Rousseau proposed a...