Business Ethics and Social Responsibility Lecture Notes

Flashcards of vocabulary terms related to business ethics and social responsibility.

Ethics

A set of principles that guide people’s behavior and judgement.

Ethical Standards

help managers make meaningful and just decisions and uphold certain values attached to these decisions

Universalism

A principle stating people should have certain values like honesty, cooperation, and respect.

Egoism

A principle which promotes the greatest good to oneself.

Utilitarianism

A principle which focuses on the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

Relativism

Principle stating that ethical behavior is based on a person's own and other relevant people's opinions and viewpoints.

Virtue Ethics

Principle which states that morality depends on the maturity of a person with good moral character.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

A responsibility that has to be beneficial to the society

A corporation's initiatives to assess and take responsibility for the company's effects on environmental and social well-being.

Social Obligation

Legal and ethical standards to uphold social welfare

Social Responsiveness

a firm engages in actions that make an impact on society.

Economic responsibilities

The most basic responsibility of a business organization is to maximize its profitability not only to attend to the interest of a shareholders but also to contribute to the progress of the economy

Milton Friedman

He once mentioned that prime responsibility of a business is to maximize profits and to ensure that it is able to pay all taxes levied by the government

Legal Responsibilities

Organization should comply with local and international laws that apply to its business operations

Ethical Responsibilities

Economic and legal corporate responsibility lay the groundwork for corporations to move into ethical social responsibility which means doing the right thing at all levels of your business.

Companies must respect the society's values and norms and operate consistently with the society’s expectations.

Philanthropic Responsibilities

The INTIATION of VOLUNTARY ACTIVITIES SUCH AS DONATIONS and feeding programs

Intersecting Circles Model

It recognizes that there is a possibility of interrelationships between the different domains of csr and it rejects the hierarchical order of importance

Concentric circles model

Which is also known as con model shares some similarities with carroll’s pyramid and ic model the con model also states economic responsibility as one of the core social responsibilities

John Elkington

Triple bottom line

Profit

A firm's success most heavily depends on its financial performance, or the profit it generates for shareholders.

People

A business’s societal impact, or its commitment to people; valuing people not as mere producers of goods but as important partnership making the company growas important partnership mak

Planet

Measures how environmentally responsible a firm has been

Stakeholder

An individual or a group that, in the context of a specific situation, is either harmed by, or benefits from, the corporation, or whose rights the corporation should respect.

For normative

It provides a reasoning as to why firms should/ must be liable/ responsible for their stakeholders interests

For descriptive

It questions the company's actual activities/ steps that benefits there stakeholders

For instrumental

Stakeholder theory tries to present an evidence whether there is a necessity for the firm to conduct such csr practices in relation to their stakeholders

Donaldson and Preston (1995)

Argued that stakeholder to your are categorized into three

• Why social responsibility a must for businesses

• To develop profitability

• To become cost-efficient

• Facilitates in handling of risk and uncertainties

• Helps in maintaining the social license to function or operate

• Enhance stakeholder relations

• Catch the best human resource to work in the team

• Helps to create new products and services