Business Ethics Case

Business ethics Mcnamara (1999), defines business ethics as the understanding of what is wrong and what is right in the business environment and doing the right thing in all relationships with stakeholders. Fisher 2005 takes business ethics to mean one of the following three things : 1 avoiding damaging the company reputation 2. Avoiding breaking the law 3. Avoiding law suits. This definition however has various pitfalls and would call for uberances fide , i.e utmost good faith which is almost impossible and not present in general business circles. Kinnear 2003 therefore suggests redefining business ethics as the series of business activities taken between competing moral values.

Fieser 1996 argues that the term business ethics in itself is a terminological contradiction. Business are bound to adhere to what is lawful and have on obligation to carry the full spectrum of morality beyond what the law requires. He argues that for this reason there is no scope for business ethics and as such they do not exist.

Maxwell 2003 contends that in trying to define business ethics one is faced with a dilemma in that different sets of ethics are set for different aspects of ones life, profession, social,religious and family. Ethics is ethics and a person cannot be unethical on one aspect and yet ethical on another. There should therefore be one standard of ethics that govern human behaviour across the board. As a result Maxwell argues that there is no such thing as business ethics.

Hartman 2003, suggest that business ethics refer to the way behaviours in business are measured based on standards of righteous and wrongness. This measurement does not rely on operational manuals put together by business such as accounting personnel or marketing procedures or any form of standard corporate governance pillars or principles, Fernando 2005.

McNamara 1999, asserts that business ethics