Moral Responsibility in Business - Research Paper Example

Moral responsibility in business 1. Discuss the nature of responsibility, contrasting the notions of causal, legal, and moral responsibility. The main components of responsibility are causal responsibility (agency), legal responsibility (liability), moral responsibility (accountability). When we talk about doing business, we can easily notice that the questions of moral responsibility are normally not regarded among the most important ones. Ethics in business facilitates efficient business relations, and its basis is constituted by moral norms that differ in various cultures, environments and situations. There are two major principles that most businessmen would use as a basis for taking ethical decisions in business: utilitarian principle and moral imperative principle. There are also the three pillars determining the unique character of business ethics: the principle of economic viability, the situational principle, and individual responsibility. The latter presupposes that there are individual peculiarities of implementing ethics into business, which correlated with the postulates of “virtue ethics”, and raises the question of potential of human development in business. Without taking into consideration the ethical aspects of business, it is nearly impossible to create good and efficient business relations with either partners or customers. It is pretty clear that development, including economic development, only becomes possible if the company’s staff treat each other with trust and respect. Such attitude is based on such notions as social responsibility, quality management, good communication and transparency. Business-ethics determines the degree of responsibility of both company and its staff, and it regulates general ethical behaviors of both sides. 2. Why, within the organizational setting, does it become difficult to determine moral responsibility? Explain specifically how the diffusion of moral responsibility can occur within organizations. The utilitarian principle of doing business says that any action can be morally justified if it tends to bring maximal benefit to the maximal number of people. If the positive effect of the decision overlaps the damage, the decision can be considered ethical. The moral imperative principle states that the moral decisions should not depend upon situations – e.g. any bribery is bad, disregarding of who you bribe; any customer should be treated with same respect, etc. It is very hard, however, to implement these both principles in practice: for this, it would be necessary to define all parties that might be affected by the decision (both individuals and companies), this of all possible consequences, and most importantly – determine whose interests are the priority and whose could be put under threat. Ethics in business should control ethical behavior of members of company and other partners, and with its help it is possible to make personnel stick to the company’s rules and values, one the one hand, and control them on the other. Whereas the basis of business ethics are also moral norms that have their own cultural peculiarities, it also has a personal side to it, that is – the issue of important of human potential and the way it develops also becomes topical when we talk about ethics in business. Business ethics is a set of rules and laws of business that are all based upon generally acknowledged values: consciousness, respect, justice etc. If we take selling or producing goods, for example, the above mentioned values correlate with product quality, customer satisfaction, sticking to rules of advertising, safety for environment etc. Individual responsibility in business is also a very interesting and important issue in business. The norm of businessman’s individual responsibility is one of the most outstanding peculiarities of business. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights claims that all people are born with equal rights and opportunities, and the basic responsibility of the state is to ensure this equality. But only individual responsibility of every person determines the way he realizes these rights and opportunities and what results he achieves in life. On the one hand, many things in business depend on the words of honor. This approach clearly correlates with viability principle: time is money, so it’s better not to waste it for unnecessary paperwork and similar things. However, the basic conditions of any agreement should be formalized, and the parties should stick to them. And the reason for this is easy to understand since in business, everyone has his own interests, and there might appear a temptation to deviate from the conditions should this deviation promise a good profit or other benefits. Which is more, sometimes agreements are concluded where one of the parties deliberately puts certain points that will ensure its benefit even if the conditions of the agreement are not met – partially or fully. However, the key thesis of business is – everyone is solely responsible for his own actions. And if the party is not enough knowledgeable in law area and signs an agreement that infringe his interests – this is his own problem, because he had had an opportunity to study all necessary legal issues or invest into professional expertise. Such an approach to responsibility looks really tough, yet it works effectively. Situations like this encourage a businessman to develop his own inner sense of individual responsibility. 3. What specific steps in an organization can be taken in order to correct this problem? Businesses that want to be both successful and responsible should follow these recommendations: elaborate a habit of regarding every issue that they tackle from the viewpoint of profit for business; stick to their own commitments and deadlines; be attentive to all agreements that they conclude; not to go for useless offers, yet be tactful and show respect to people who offer the; be sure of themselves but not overconfident as this might cause you use harmful methods while doing business; take responsibility for all their actions; never forget that their position is not the only one possible; not to leave any case of failure without analyzing it; always correlate the company’s goals with personal goals of your staff; be tolerant to people’s disadvantages if they do not affect business; never insult people as it is never forgotten or forgiven; be fair. Read More