Ethical issues in businesses today There are a million ethical issues in today’s businesses and unfortunately there is no perfect decision measurement for all these ethical issues in business. The ethical issues in international businesses are much more complicated and much more delicate, along with being tenfold in numbers. According to Wiley (1995), “ethics is concerned with moral obligation, responsibility, and social justice. She goes on to say that “ethics reflects the character of the individual and more con temporarily per haps, the character of the business firm, which is a collection of individuals. (Mauro et all, 1999) It is evident that ethics play such a crucial role in businesses if we consider the instances like the “Enron company’s ethical break down”. Not only in “Enron”, but Dilemmas involving discrimination, harassment, fraud, contractual breaches, favouritism and consistent policies regarding pay, rewards and discipline are common occurrences in many organizations. Hartel, C. E. J, Fujimoto, Y, 2010) “Industry Wide Ethical Issues in Business Following is a list of industry wide ethical issues in businesses. The problem with these ethical issues in business is that they are not only really routine and frequent but they are also more wide-spread • Bribing powerful officials in order to get bids and tenders accepted and bribing competitor employees to get informational leaks is a serious ethical issue in business.
In fact, it is a crime that is legally punishable in most countries today. • Labor related issues like gender discrimination at workplace, employee harassment, minority community participation, working conditions and child labor are also some general ethical issues in business. • Business practices like sourcing of materials, quality of inputs in production, compromising on certain aspects like product quality, safety, etc. and deception in packaging, quantity or size also fall in the purview of business ethics. Some industries consciously omit the details of the side effects of the usage of their products from the product packaging while some indulge in controversial practices like animal testing and these too are some of the ethical issues in businesses. • Forcing labor to work at below minimum wages, sweatshop work conditions, violation of worker rights and not complying with health, safety and environmental standards are some common current ethical issues in business.
Company Specific Ethical Issues in Business Here are some company specific ethical issues in business. These ethical issues should be dealt with pretty strictly as to serve an example to the rest. • Showing honesty, integrity and openness in consumer relationships, addressing warranty and guarantee claims in an open and transparent manner and involving the company in some kind of social welfare causes is an ethical business practice that many are yet to follow. Whether to accept moral responsibility of on site mishaps, spills, leaks and disasters and whether to make product recalls if certain harmful information about them comes to light, are ethical issues that all businesses must be prepared for. • Unethical business practices like dumping good at loss making prices just to earn market shares or to oust a new competitor from business, colluding with competitors to fix higher prices, using high pressure selling tactics, using deceptive advertising, etc. re also some things that need to be looked at. • Some stronger ethical issues in business are related to practices that are not easily detected, like releasing products that have built in obsolescence (to generate further demand for future products) and indulging in accounting manipulations to generate secret reserves or to show higher or lower profits as per convenience” ( http://www. buzzle. com/articles/ethical-issues-in-business. html)
