BUS 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Business Ethics, Virtue Ethics, Due Process

• School: George Mason University
• Department: Business
• Course: BUS 100
• Professor: pierce

Document Summary

Prevent or minimize harm: employees should act ethically to prevent harm to the general public and the corporations many stakeholders, do no harm!! Promote personal mortality: promoting ethics in business is a personal one, people want to act in ways that are consistent with their own sense of right and wrong. Why ethical problems occur in business: ethical problems occur frequently in business, figure 5. 4. Competitive pressures on profits: companies are squeezed by tough competition, they sometimes engage in unethical activities to protect their profits, managers of poor financial performers and companies with financial uncertainty are more prone to commit illegal acts. Cross-cultural contradictions: knottiest ethical problems occur as corporations do business in other societies where ethical standards differ from those at home, ethical relativism is raised. Vi(cid:396)tue ethi(cid:272)s: pu(cid:396)sui(cid:374)g a (cid:862)good(cid:863) life: virtue ethics focuses on the character traits that a good person should possess, theorizing that moral values that will direct the person toward good behavior, figure 5. 7.