This is an easy to understand summary from the book, 5th edition. we made it for our study group for the final exam. we did chapters 1 - 10 with logical headings. its become a bit larger than anticipated because of adding college notes too.
Summary Business Ethics Ch 1 - 10
Andrew Crane
5th edition
English
Oxford University Press
9780198810070
,Corporate Social Responsibility – summary book
Chapter 1: introducing business ethics
Business ethics is an oxymoron: it brings together two contradictory concepts,
such as in ‘a cheerful pessimist’. There cannot be ethics in business, business is in
some way unethical.
Business ethics: the study of business situations, activities, and decisions where
issues of morally right and morally wrong are addressed.
There is a grey area between ethics and the law. Values may be in conflict here.
Many problems are equivocal, what means that there simply may not be a
definitive ‘right’ answer to many business ethics problems. For example, testing
products on animals.
Business ethics problems also tend to be very controversial and open to widely
different points of view.
Studying business ethics should help you to make better decisions, but this is
not the same as making unequivocally right decisions.
Morality: the norms, values, and beliefs embedded in social processes which define
right and wrong for an individual or a community.
Ethics: the study of morality and the application of reason to elucidate specific
rules and principles that determine right and wrong for a given situation. These
rules and principles are called ethical theories.
Ethics is about some form of rationalization of morality.
So, ethics rationalizes morality to produce ethical theories that can be applied to
any situation.
, Why is a good understanding of business ethics important?
1. The power and influence of business in society is greater than ever
before. Business ethics helps us to understand why this is happening,
what its implications might be, and how we might address this situation.
2. Business has the potential to provide a major contribution to our societies
(producing the products and services that we want, providing
employment, etc.). How this contribution is made raises ethical issues
that go to the heart of the social role of business in contemporary society.
3. Business malpractices have the potential to inflict enormous harm on
individuals, on communities and on the environment. Business ethics can
be used to improve the human condition.
4. The demands being placed on business to be ethical by its various
stakeholders are constantly becoming more complex and more
challenging. Business ethics help to understand these challenges more
clearly, in order that films can meet these ethical expectations more
effectively.
5. Few businesspeople have received formal business ethics education or
training. Business ethics can help to improve ethical decision-making by
providing managers with knowledge and tools.
6. Ethical violations continue to occur in business. Business ethics help us
with a way of looking at the reasons behind these violations, and the way
in with they might be dealt with by managers, regulators and other
interested.
7. Business ethics can provide us with the ability to assess benefits and
problems associated with different ways of managing ethics in
organizations.
8. Business ethics provide us with knowledge that transcends the traditional
framework of business studies and confronts us with some of the most
important questions faced by society. The subject can therefore be richly
rewarding for study.
Small businesses typically differ in their attention and approach to business ethics
to big corporations. These differences include:
- The lack of time and resources small business managers have available
to focus on ethics
- Their autonomy and independence with respect to
responsibilities to other stakeholders
- Their informal trust-based approach to managing ethics
- They asses their employees as their single most important stakeholder
Race to the bottom: companies look for foreign direct investment to those
countries that can offer them the most favourable conditions in terms of low tax
rates, low levels of environmental regulation, and restricted workers’ rights.
Two main developments in the last few decades being particularly important:
- Technology: they open up the possibility of connecting and interacting
with people despite the fact that there are large geographical distances
between them.
- Political: borders have become less important, you can travel
easily between countries.
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