Ethical and Moral Issues in Business
Trever Canham
MGMT 216
March 14, 2011
Prof. Lewkut
Ethical and Moral Issues in Business
Ethics are the back bone of every industry looking to survive in the business world. A customer would eventually lose interest in a company if they decided to promote bad customer service or poor quality products. Often times a company will have a mission statement that defines their purpose and their methods of achieving that purpose. For example, FedEx says “Customer requirements will be met in the highest quality manner appropriate to each market segment served. Safety will be the first consideration in all operations. Corporate activities will be conducted to the highest ethical and professional standards,” (FedEx, 2011). It is evident they are covering their bases in saying the customer needs come first and when doing this, the highest standards will be up held.
Ethical issues based on a group effort and consideration. These can stem from any number of sources including church, school, clubs, and work, so basically group type activities. The moral issues are things people feel personally that can still come from the same type of groups. Morals, “may require a notion of a natural order (possibly of a religious character) that certain actions violate, even if they do not cause harm in some other way,” (Blum, 2006). This applies more to the code a person lives by and judges themselves on.
Personal ethics relate to the person dictating them. This is not limited to just the business needs and its partners; this has to do with a person’s life as a spectrum. A person’s choice of religion, sexuality, health needs, etc, may make them a vegetarian and active sports enthusiast. Their job can still be a meat packing plant manager; they just have to apply different ethics at that point so their goals as a business leader still help the company. They do not have to directly conflict with personal ethics.
With the information given above,...