I believe in taking the position that to the law cannot reinstate the ethical be

Question

I believe in taking the position that to the law cannot reinstate the ethical behavior in the businesses. In fact, people do care of being ethical in business now. With the passing of time, the concept of social responsibility in business ethics has gathered momentum, once the basic survival concept of the businesses stabilized. As a matter of fact, today's society has increasing expectations about corporate social responsibility. Also, today's diverse workforce brings a wide variety of values and morals to the workplace. The social responsibility in today’s era, have spread its wings to include the broader concept of ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’. This concept is much wider than what Milton Friedman suggested in 1962 and is also included in the overall concept of the Managerial Ethics theory that can be categorized into three essential parts:

The Social Responsibility of the Corporate is now a scientific approach of Organizational duties towards the larger benefits of the society. Its emergence has been due to

Ø Growth in size of corporate enterprises

Ø Education and impact of business activities in society

Ø Claims made by Companies on society

Most of the mature management has started realizing that only socially responsible behavior can work towards building favorable public opinion. It is not that they are altruistic - not because they are interested in public relations. The managers have to face a dilemma of where to draw a line.

We have an anomaly of economic analysis as an only reliable way versus over concentration of profits which has led to a number of examples of no consideration to:

                - Environmental health

                - Worker safety

                - Consumer interests and other side issues.

Therefore, the Professionals find the doctrine of social responsibility as incompatible in a free society. In a free society, a corporate executive is an employee of the Firm’s owners. He has direct responsibility to his employers. Hence, everywhere in Business, ethics and social responsibility, do play a significant role. Here, nowhere have the laws to play a role in particular.

In fact, in businesses, Ethical standards, whether formal or informal have changed considerably. We cannot say that Ethical Standards have fallen or that the society has drifted. It is the reverse - - the issue is not just having the standards but living up to them.

§   Business corporations of today are much bigger than in the past and the impact of their operations on the society is much larger.

§   Good potential for thoughtless actions – long term consequences.

§   Scope of operations of organizations has widened.

§   A greater lot of the population is victim of bad actions by relatively few with disastrous consequence.

§   Ethics as a subject has been introduced in management curriculum in Harvard in 1907.

§   Ethical issues occur frequently in management.

§   They extend far beyond the commonly discussed problems of bribery, collusion, and theft, reaching into such areas as Corporate acquisitions, marketing policies, and capital investments.

§   In merging the two firms, it is found that some of the positions in one are duplicated in the other.

§   “Right” and “Proper” and “Fair” are ethical terms. They express a judgment about behavior towards people that is felt to be just.

§   Moral standards differ among individuals because the values upon which they are based differ

§   No one can say which certainty that a given moral standard is correct or incorrect provided it can be shown that the standard truly does express an obligation to others, and not just a benefit for us.

§   There is a “right” or “proper” or “just” balance between economic performance and social performance and the dilemma of management comes in finding it.

In fact, in businesses, some actions are legal though unethical which proves to say that law fails to regulate ethics in a Business. Let us take the following example to understand this statement better:

Mr. ABC composes a music and circulates it privately to just two of his friends in order to know their feedbacks before he goes ahead to copyright the same before his public circulation of the composition. One of his friends gets the music copyrighted on his name. So legally, Mr. ABC has no way to get the rights reserved on his name in spite of it being his original composition. On the other side, his friend gets the copyrights for the composition without any active involvement of his to create the same. Here, there is a clash of ethics with law because legally, Mr. ABC’s friend reserves the copyrights while ethically, he should not have had. (So legally right but ethically wrong).

Hence I believe, my position is defensible.

Explanation / Answer

Business Ethics/Learning Activity #1

Show Me the Regulation? There are at least two different positions taken on the question of whether government regulation or laws can facilitate ethical behavior. Some take the position that you cannot trust businesses on their own to do what is ethical; therefore, some government intervention in the form of laws and regulations is necessary. On the other hand, some argue that overreaching laws and regulations do not facilitate ethical behavior, and indeed might have the opposite effect. What do you think about the debate and what is your position? Why do you believe your position is sustainable or defensible?

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