Responsibilities to Third Parties

RESPONSIBILITIES TO THIRD PARTIES: HONESTY, WHISTLE BLOWING AND INSIDE TRADING

RESPONSIBILITIES TO THIRD PARTIES: HONESTY

HONESTY – refers to a facet of moral character and denotes positive, virtuous attributes such as integrity, truthfulness, and straightforwardness along with the absence of lying, cheating, or theft.

DISHONESTY – is defined as the act or to act without honesty. It is used to describe a lack of probity, cheating, lying or being deliberately deceptive or a lack in integrity.

GENERAL REASONS OF THE ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITY TO BE HONEST:

A. Utilitarian rationale concludes that dishonesty undermines the ability of people to communicate and thus will have adverse social consequences.

B. Kantian tradition in ethics argues that dishonesty treats others as a means to our own ends and thus disrespects the dignity of other persons

C. Third ethical perspective looks not to dishonesty’s effect on others, but to what dishonesty does to the dishonest person

RESPONSIBILITIES TO THIRD PARTIES: WHISTLE BLOWING

WHISTLEBLOWER – is an employee or other insider who informs the public or a government agency of an illegal, harmful or unethical activity done by their business or institution.

Whistleblowers may make their allegations internally (for example, to other people within the accused organization) or externally (to regulators, law enforcement agencies, to the media or to groups concerned with the issues).

WHISTLEBLOWING – alerting someone outside your organization or outside your immediate working environment to some kind of wrongdoing.

ETHICALTY OF WHISTLEBLOWING INVOLVES:

* PERMISSIBILTY

* OBLIGATORINESS

CONDITION BEFORE WHISTLEBLOWING CAN BE ETHICALLY PERMISSIBLE:

1. There must be a real threat of serious harm that the whistleblowing seeks to address.

2. The whistleblower should first seek to prevent the harm more immediately through channels internal to the firm.

3. If...