1. BA 385: Who’s Pencil Is It?
Chapter Six: Business Ethics Fundamentals

2. Business Ethics: What Does It Really Mean?
Definitions
Ethics involves a discipline that examines good or bad practices within the context of a moral duty
Moral conduct is behavior that is right or wrong
Business ethics include practices and behaviors that are good or bad

3. Business Ethics: What Does It Really Mean?
Two Key Branches of Ethics
Descriptive ethics involves describing, characterizing and studying morality
“What is”
Normative ethics involves supplying and justifying moral systems
“What should be”

4. Business Ethics Categories
Employee-Employer Relations
Employer-Employee Relations
Company-Customer Relations
Company-Shareholder Relations
Company-Community/Public Interest

5. Public’s Opinion of Business Ethics
Gallup Poll finds that only 17 percent to 20 percent of the public thought the business ethics of executives to be very high or high
To understand public sentiment towards business ethics, ask three questions:
Has business ethics really deteriorated?
Are the media reporting ethical problems more frequently and vigorously?
Are practices that once were socially acceptable no longer socially acceptable?

6. First conviction in HP board leak scandal case
Business Ethics in the News:
Dirty dining?
‘Dateline’ hidden cameras investigate cleanliness of America’s top 10 fast food chains
First conviction in HP board leak scandal case
Enron scandal
• Fast food chains under scrutiny 'Dateline' hidden cameras investigate cleanliness of America's top fast food chains. NBC's Lea Thompson reports.
Dateline NBC
Wall Street scandals

7. Conventional Approach to Business Ethics
Conventional approach to business ethics involves a comparison of a decision or practice to prevailing societal norms
Pitfall: ethical relativism
Decision or Practice Prevailing Norms
(padding expense acct.) (my boss does it)

8. Sources of Ethical Norms
Fellow Workers
Family
Friends
The Law
Regions of Country
Profession
Employer
Society at Large
Local community
Religious Beliefs
The Individual
Conscience

9. Business Response to Ethics: The Ethics Officer
Ethics Officers Association is a professional association of managers of corporate ethics and compliance. Visit EOA’s web site at::

10. Ethics, Economics, and Law

11. Four Important Ethical Questions
What is?
What ought to be?
How to we get from what is to what ought to be?
What is our motivation for acting ethically?

12. 3 Models of Management Ethics
Immoral Management— A style devoid of ethical principles and active opposition to what is ethical.
Moral Management— Conforms to high standards of ethical behavior.
Amoral Management
Intentional - does not consider ethical factors
Unintentional - casual or careless about ethical considerations in business

13. Three Approaches to Management Ethics

14. Three Models of Management Morality and Emphasis on CSR

15. Moral Management Models and Acceptable Stakeholder Thinking

16. Developing Moral Judgment

17. Elements of Moral Judgment
Amoral Managers
Moral Managers
Moral Imagination
Ability to perceive web of competing economic, moral and ethical relationships.
Moral Identification
Ability to discern the relevance or nonrelevance of moral factors that are introduced into a decision-making situations.
Moral Evaluation
Have clear principles, develop processes for weighing ethical factors, develop way to identify ethical and economic outcomes.
Tolerance of Moral Disagreement and Ambiguity
Ability to deal in “gray” areas and operate within disagreement.
Integration of Managerial and Moral Competence
See each decision within a moral perspective that is integrated with a management perspective.
A Sense of Moral Obligation
“Get it”, that is, have a sense of integrity that oversees decision-making processes and understands what is at stake for all.