Management Conflict and Ethics

Title: Management Conflict and Ethics

Netpanna Yavirach, Asst,prof.,

Department of management, Faculty of Business Administration, Rajamangala Institute of Technology

In what sense can it be said that an organization can, as a whole, be ethical of unethical? What characteristics (e.g. structures, policies, powers, responsibilities, codes, cultures, procedures) would mark out an ethical organization?

Business ethics is an applied ethics. It is the application of our understanding of what is good and right to do. A discussion of business ethics must begin by providing a framework of basic principles for understanding what is meant by the terms "good" and "right". In popular usage the term "ethics" has a variety of different meanings. One of the meanings often given to it is: the principles of conduct governing an individual or a group. We use the term "personal ethics" to refer to the rules by which an individual lives his or her personal life, and use the term "accounting ethics" to refer to the code that guides the professional conduct of accountants (Velasquez (1988).,p.11). Ethics is concerned with the moral judgments involved in moral decisions. Ethics does not study all normative judgment, only those that are concerned with what is morally right and wrong, or morally good and bad. When something is judged to be morally right or wrong, or morally good or bad, the underlying standards on which the judgment is based are moral standards. Moral standards include both specific moral norms and more general moral principles. Moral norms are standards of behavior that require, prohibit, or allow certain specific kinds of behavior. Prohibitions against lying, stealing, injuring, and so on, are all moral norms. Moral principles are much more general standards that are used to evaluate the adequacy of our social policies and institutions as well as of individual behavior.

For profit organization, business ethics is a specialized study of moral right and wrong. It concentrates on how moral standards apply particularly to business policies, institutions, and behavior. Business enterprises are the primary economic institutions through which people in modern societies carry on the tasks of producing and distributing goods and services. They provide the fundamental structures within which the members of society combine there scarce resources, land, labor, capital and technology. They provide the channels through which these goods are distributed in the form of consumer products, employee salaries, investors' return, and government taxes. Mining, manufacturing, retailing, banking, marketing, transporting, insuring, constructing, and advertising are all different