Discuss the importance of business ethics in international business - Essay Example

In an exasperation of the predicament of the consumers a college student wrote: "In the end we realize that in everything we do we are either spending money or being persuaded to spend our money. This is just one way we the consumers are being exploited (Breaking the Chains, 2006)". The business industries cannot go on with this kind of exploitation. This paper then intends to discuss the relevance of strict adherence to ethical standards. This paper shall be presented with the thesis that the international business has become unethical in its desire to gain more profit.

This paper then must be able to present to the public the role of ethics in the international business to enlighten them to what ethical standards can do to protect the people as consumers and workers of the gigantic system in the international business. Specifically, this paper shall define what business ethics means and to present realistic situations that can illustrate how the business industries can become the worst enemies of the consumers without the ethical standards. Business ethics is defined as "written and unwritten codes of principles and values that govern decisions and actions within a company (Business, 2008)".

Accordingly, the culture of the organization sets standards for determining the difference between good and bad decision making and behavior. Where business organizations are usually put up with visions and missions of providing quality goods and services, it must be that they should observe business ethics that are rooted to the concept of doing right and deciding best for the greater majority of the masses and not for their own selfish interest. And yet, it may seem that business establishments in the international order have forgotten that their prime concern should be the interest of the people.

Instead these business industries exploit and squeeze out more money and labor from the consumers and from their work force. Instead of serving the people as part of their mission, they deprive or shortchange these people of what must be due to them. And yet not many try would even to struggle out or to do something to improve their working condition or to question the morality and ethics of the spiraling cost of goods and services. This is also what WiseGeek pointed out when it wrote: Business ethics should eliminate exploitation, from the sweat shop children who are making sneakers to the coffee serving staff who are being ripped off in wages.

Business ethics can be applied to everything from the trees cut down to make the paper that a business sells to the ramifications of importing coffee from certain countries (WiseGeek, 2008). Ethics indeed must be the conscience of the international business world. It should not be left forgotten in the hearts of any organization. Business ethics is relevant in the fulfilment of industrial peace and justice in the society. Wiley (1995) also indicated this in her discussion on what managers must maintain to keep their companies: "In today's domestic and global economies, the