Business Ethics

BUSINESS ETHICS PAPER

BUS550_B03 – CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY

September 4, 2011

Business ethics has slowly but assuredly made it into the lime light of stakeholder concerns. Not all of the decisions that have been made by businesses and their representatives have been deemed honest or ethical. In fact, there are several examples of both good and evil being performed by organizations. Adopting a worldview perspective would allow firms to improve on their reputations and provide returns to all involved stakeholders in the most ethical manners. Understanding the framework of a business’ worldview house means incorporating ideals associated with who businesses are (ontology), how they apprehend absolute truths (epistemology), and how a firm derives its values (axiology).

BUSINESS ETHICAL PRACTICE ONE: GOING GREEN EXAMPLES

All major areas and industries are being affected by corporate social responsibility. In today’s society technology, financial services, energy, retail, and manufacturing sectors are all developing environmentally safe practices and saving hundreds of millions of dollars. For instance, ”Sun Microsystems (JAVA)…aims to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2012 through a range of practices, from using cooler, energy-saving technology in its computer chips to allowing thousands of its 34,400 employees to work at home” (Iwata, 2011). Newsweek ranked IBM #1 in its Green Ranking based on reputation, environmental impact, and green policies (IBM, 2011). These types of corporate initiative when displayed receive high accolade from stakeholders.

BUSINESS ETHICAL PRACTICE TWO: BAD FINANCIAL PRACTICES EXAMPLE

When Jeffrey Skilling was hired at Enron, he filled his staff with strategic managers, whom utilized accounting loopholes, special purpose entities, and highly unethical accounting and financial reporting measures to hide billions of Enron’s business failures (BBC Word News Edition, 2002). Enron cost...