Ethical and Moral Issues in Business

Ethical issues are defined as a problem or situation which requires a person or organization to choose between alternatives that must be evaluated as either right (ethical) or wrong (unethical). Moral issues are those which involve a difference of belief and not a matter of preference. In other words, a moral dispute would involve a factual disagreement where one or the other or neither belief is correct. It would not involve a disagreement in attitude or feeling.

Personal ethics and business ethics must be in sync with each other to have a free and open market, a strong economy and even personal mental health. They are entirely separate things. A person cannot maintain a healthy, positive relationship with family and or friends while beings selfish and cutthroat in business. Personal ethics include ideas that are important to a person such as honesty or integrity. Business ethics, on the other hand, is the behavior that a business adheres to in its daily dealings with the world. Some common ethical problems in business today are: Showing honesty, integrity and openness in consumer relationships, addressing warranty and guarantee claims in an open and transparent manner and involving the company in some kind of social welfare causes is an ethical business practice that many are yet to follow. Whether to accept moral responsibility of onsite mishaps, spills, leaks and disasters and whether to make product recalls if certain harmful information about them comes to light, are ethical issues that all businesses must be prepared for. Unethical business practices like dumping good at loss making prices just to earn market shares or to oust a new competitor from business, colluding with competitors to fix higher prices, using high pressure selling tactics, using deceptive advertising, are also some things that need to be looked at. Some stronger ethical issues in business are related to practices that are not easily detected, like releasing products that have...