Ethical and Unethical Business Practices

Introduction

With the development of economy, there are many illegal issues that happened around commercial activities. This is due to the purpose of all business being monetary incentives. As a result, greed expands gradually and leads business to the area of unethical practices, legal complication and general mistrust (Buzzle, 2012). Because of this, business ethics plays an ever increasing crucial role of our times.

Ethical and Unethical Business Practices

Ethics concern the moral judgments about right and wrong. Business ethics is a moral code of conduct companies follow. By setting the ethical standards, a business would lower the risks for legal claims. Ethical business practices help the business to promote the common good of its employees, customers and even competitors (wiseGeek, 2014).

Recently, for more and more companies, there is an unhealthy objective which is pursuit of making more money and getting ahead. Following are some kinds of activities under the ambit of unethical practice (The Times 100, 2014).                                                                                                                        

• Resorting to dishonesty, trickery or deception.
• Distortion of facts to mislead or confuse.
• Manipulating people emotionally by exploiting their vulnerabilities.
• Greed to amass excessive profit.
• Creation of false documents to show increased profits.
• Avoiding penalty or compensation for unlawful act.
• Lack of transparency ad resistance to investigation.
• Harming the environment by exceeding the government prescribed norms for pollution.
• Invasion of privacy used as leverage, for obtaining personal or professional gains.
• Sexual discrimination

In order to understand deeper the unethical practices, we refer to some specific cases.

Case Study

1. Apple

Background

In 2013, Apple faced the criticism that Apples' iPhones are produced at factories which subject workers to objectionable working conditions in China. On the one hand, the training for the new staffs lacks information on safety, even for the employees who are working in the dangerous chemical environment and other perils (Sam, 2013). On the other hand, on average the employees work 174 hours per month and 80-100 hours overtime (Maryana, 2012). Employees are forced to work overtime as well as on weekends and are not able to use their paid days off benefits due to low salaries and threats of being fired. Besides that, employees also complained about a lack of effective grievance channels because of the dormitories of eight people (Sophia, 2013).