C717 Business Ethics

Why Study Business Ethics?

to help you do ethics and be ethical

What are a company's core values?

Beliefs and principles that provide the ultimate guide in its decision making

In What Year did Congress pass the Sarbanes-Oxley Act

2002

What is the Sarbanes-Oxley Act

law to address the wave of corporate and accounting scandals

Section 406 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act

Code of Ethics for Senior Financial Officers, requires corporations to have a code of ethics applicable to its principal financial officer and comptroller or principal accounting officer, or persons performing similar functions

Code of Ethics (of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act) must include 3 standards:

1. honest and ethical conduct, including the ethical handling of actual or apparent conflicts of interest between personal and professional relationships

2. full, fair, accurate, timely, and understandable closure in the periodic reports required to be filled by the issuer; and

3. compliance with applicable governmental rules and regulations

Core Values

beliefs and principles that provide the ultimate guide in its decision making

Business Ethics

1. refers to those values, standards, and principles that operate within business

2. refers to an academic discipline that not only studies those standards, values, and principles, but also seeks to articulate and defend those that ought to or should operate in business

The word ethics is derived from which greek word

ethos, meaning customary or conventional

What is the difference between ethos and ethics

what IS valued and what OUGHT to be valued

Philosophical Ethics

distinguishes what people DO value from what people SHOULD value

morality

how each of us should live our lives

virtues

character traits

Why is studying ethics relevant to Business?

it is essential to living a responsible and meaningful life

What are the three components of the goal of Business Ethics?

1. understanding ethical issues

2. analyzing ethical issues

3. becoming sensitive to the importance of ethics

What are the challenges of living an ethical life

deciding how to act, who to be, and how to live

Steps to making a responsible decision

1. Knowing and understanding the facts

2. Identifying the ethical issues involved

3. Identifying all stakeholders (Identify the people that might be affected by the situation)

4. Understanding how those stakeholders will be affected(understand how they might be affected)

5. Employing Moral Imagination to understand alternatives (Consider alternative courses of action)

6. Consider how others will judge your decision (Step back and decide how the public will react)

7. Making a decision and monitoring and learning from the results

Social Ethics

questions of public policy, law, civic virtue, and political philosophy

Relativism

a theory that knowledge is relative to the limited nature of the mind and the conditions of knowingb : a view that ethical truths depend on the individuals and groups holding them

Virtue ethics reminds one to look to the actual practices one finds in the business world and ask?

what type of people are being created by these peactices

Principles, practices, obligations, deserved recompense, and duties are concepts that are the heart of (which type of ethics)?

Principle based ethics

Identify the intellectual capacities for achieving the goals of business ethics

1. a finely tuned set of analytical skills to evaluate ethical issues

2. A better understanding of ethical issues

3. a refined sensitivity to appreciate the significance of leading an ethical life

True or False: A student will be fully prepared for a career in accounting, finance, or any area of business even if he/she is unfamiliar with ethical issues of these fields

False

True or False: One of the reasons a business manager has to be concerned with the ethical standards of his or her organization is that the law demands it

True

Identify the code that corresponds to Section 406 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act

Code of Ethics for Senior Financial Officers

In the context of contemporary business management. It is clear that a company that does not pay attention to ethical standards can_

A.) reduce the risk of its employees going to jail

B.) lose in the marketplace and can go out of business

C.) survive any competition without much effort

D. suffer financial losses due to rigid government

B.) lose in the marketplace and can go out of business

__ and _ can provide a competitive advantage in the marketplace and with customers, suppliers, and employees.

A.) personal goals; personal satisfaction

B.) Ethical behavior: and ethical reputation

C.) Amoral techniques; an outright deception

D.) Profit margins; demarketing strategies

B.) Ethical behavior: and ethical reputation

A company's core values are those beliefs and principles that__

provide the ultimate guide in its decision making

Even after the decision has been made, responsible decision making requires on to __

monitor the results and learn from them

Making a responsible decision requires that one begins_

with a fair and accurate understanding of a situation

Identify a vital step in ethical decision making

A.) Disregarding the factors associated with the ethical issue

B.) Explaining what makes an issue an ethical issue

C.) Assessing the number of individuals involved in an ethical issue

D.) Identifying the source of an ethical issue

B.) Explaining what makes an issue an ethical issue

Once the ethical issues have been identified, the next step in responsible decision making is to_

A.) understand how external parties may view the cause of the issue

B.) identify the steps required to ensure that the effects are beneficial to the concerned individuals

C.) Identify the people who are affected by a situation ans understand how they might be affected

D.) understand how a situation can be changed to benefit a person or a business

C.) Identify the people who are affected by a situation ans understand how they might be affected

To explore a wide range of alternative choices and ethical values in ethical decision making, one needs to use___

A.) illegal procedures

B.) practical deception

C.) outright lies

D.) moral Imagination

D.) moral Imagination

When making a responsible decision, _is often a good test

A.) regulation

B.) morality

C.) transparency

D.) penalty

C.) transparency

Ethical failures have been responsible for some of the most dramatic business failures in the past decade, which can.

A.) positively shape the global market

B.) motivate management to perform better

C.) jeopardize entire national economies

D.) destroy the dogmatic attitudes of every consumer

C.) jeopardize entire national economies

According to James Collins and Jerry Porras, the essential and enduring tenets are___

A.) aimed at improving financial gain

B.) aimed at maintaining short-term goals without changing the profit orientation of a company

C.) not to be compromised for financial gain or short-term expediency

D.) not helpful to define a company

C.) not to be compromised for financial gain or short-term expediency

An organization's core ideology includes the _.

A.) purpose of the business's competitors

B.) decisions taken while designing the organization

C.) union of core values and a clear corporate purpose

D.) union of employees' personal goals and the steps needed to take to reach them

C.) union of core values and a clear corporate purpose

Based on their research on successful companies, James Collins and Jerry Porras are explicit in pointing out that while having a set of values was essential in long-term success, they discovered no _.

A.) institutions promoting core values

B.) examples of core values

C.) factors influencing core values

D.) right set of core values

D.) right set of core values

According t James Collins and Jerry Porras, having a set of strong values is __.

A.) important for the long-term financial success of a business