Business Ethics - Module 1
Business Ethics - Module 1
Nature of Ethics
• It is a subject which deals with human beings
• Humans by their nature are capable of judging between right and wrong, good and bad
behavior.
1. Personal Ethics
When a person accepts a moral code to such an extent that he is highly motivated
towards the conduct required by the principle and against behavior that conflict with those
principles. The guilt occurs when he violates his principles.
Code of Ethics
It refers to a written set of guidelines issued by an organization to its workers and management
to help them conduct their actions with its primary values & ethical standards.
Difficulties in implementing Code of Ethics
1. Culture
2. Design
3. Enforcement
Code of conduct ethics for Professional Groups
A. Code of the Medical Council of India
B. Ethics for Chartered Accountants in Chartered Accountant’s act
C. The Engineers Code
D. Code for Marketing Managers
E. The code of Ethics of Public Relation Practitioners
F. Code of Ethics of the association for Computer Machinery
G. Code of Advertisers issued by the advertisement Council of India
Managing Ethics
1. Top Management-company must be committed to ensure that ethical standards are met.
2. Code of Ethics- Creating ethical statement and communicating it within the company.
3. Ethics Committee-in firms to help them with and advice on work related ethical issues.
4. Ethics Hotline-helps its employees report any ethical issues they face at work.
5. Ethics training Programs-Companies take ethics seriously and provide training for its
managers and employees.
6. Ethics and law-focus on defining the perfect human behavior. Law is the Government
attempt and ethics depends on individual.
Ethical Behavior
1. Value Systems
2. Locus of Control- In personality psychology, locus of control is the degree to which
people believe that they have control over the outcome of events in their lives, as
opposed to external forces beyond their control.
3. Machiavellianism- is defined as a strategy of social conduct that involves manipulating others
for personal gain.
4. Cognitive Moral Development- is the process of moving through stages of maturity in
terms of making ethical decisions.
Six Ethical Philosophies
1. Categorical Imperative- an unconditional moral obligation which is binding in all
circumstances and is not dependent on a person's inclination or purpose(right is right at