Is ethical Business Good or Bad for Business - Essay Example

The researcher states that as recently as about a decade ago, most firms perceived business ethics in terms of compliance with the legal standards as well as their adherence to the internal regulations and rules only. In the present day business world, this situation has changed greatly. Attention to the business ethics has increased throughout the globe and many organizations have realized that they must earn their customers confidence and respect for them to attain remarkable success. Corporations like never before, are being encouraged, asked, as well as prodded towards improvement of their business practices in emphasizing ethical and legal behavior.

Corporations, individuals, and professional firms are increasingly being held accountable for their operations, as business witness growth in demand for higher corporate social responsibility standards. Workplace ethics have been a very hot topic in the current business studies. In the American workers’ eyes, the market downturn can certainly be attributed to deceit and greed. However, there are some other additional factors for the growing discussion concerning ethical practices in the workplace and they include the executives conduct regarding pay: throughout multiple firms, there exist inequalities in pay from the individuals at the highest organisational levels to those below them.

The discrepancy is frequently linked to custom and entitlement but not to performance. Second is the awareness of potential of falling off the slippery slope, whereby individuals have witnessed many people falling off from their levels. Third is the behavior of sports and academic heroes, particularly the recent Syracuse and Penn State Universities’ scandals, which surpass football fields to leadership at various levels in both institutions. Finally is an unpinning of the way individuals treat each other.

Current political game has rhetoric of blames making individuals assume that the society only cares about winning with civility being ruled out of winning (Lattal, 2012, p. 22). Answering the question whether ethical behavior is good or bad for business organizations is not an easy task. Unquestionably, ethical conduct makes a good sense of business. However, just as with all the other business studies’ issues, there exist two sides to this argument and this could be highlighted in the advantages and disadvantages of ethical business.

Some of the benefits of ethical business include improvement in business and brand recognition and awareness, higher revenues- due to the demand from the positive consumer support, new financial sources such as from ethical investors, and better motivation and recruitment of employees. Arguments against ethical business present such disadvantages as higher costs like sourcing from the fair-trade suppliers instead of lowest prices, dangers of creating false expectations, and higher overheads such as communication and training of ethical policies.

These arguments form the basis of this paper. Focus is on establishing whether ethical business is good or bad for business entities and this shall be given from the literature review findings from which the writer shall draw strong points to support ethical business conduct/operations. Thus, this paper wishes to present ethical business conduct as being good for businesses. Literature Review Business ethics is one of the specialized ethics’ branches that focus on the application of moral standards to business behavior and organizations (Velasques, 1998).

Being as such, business ethics cannot be comprehended separately from general ethics ideas and the common ethical theories as well applying to the business ethics (Fritzsche & Becker, 1984; Hunt & Vitell, 1986; Lahdesnati, 2005; Schumann, 2001). The normative ethical theory present varied moral theories, which independently prescribe set of the moral rules, which individual