Ethical Issues in Business and Sustainability

Ethical Concerns in Business
Assignment 1: Critical Essay
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Introduction
Business ethics have been becoming an increasingly important concern in business. It includes
set off moral principles that guides conduct within the scope of its business (Shaw, 2015).
Ethics includes making a distinction between right and the wrong for undertaking a correct
course of action. Ethics hence includes a branch of philosophy that answers moral questions
concerning good, evil, wrong and the right. Thus, incorporating in activities or decisions for
addressing of right or wrong is the course of business ethics. Business ethics can stem from
individual stakeholders action to organisational systems and can lead to legal systems within
corporations. Concerns regarding business ethics have risen considerably in the 1980s in order
that commitment of businesses to non-economic values can be accelerated to includes ethical
codes and social responsibilities (Labowitz, 2014). The scope of the current discussion of the
essay concerns the major ethical issues for businesses.
Research
With globalization there has been an accelerated activities and cross-border activities of
businesses (Banerjee, 2008). Such business activities though increasing revenues and
profitability of businesses have put immense pressure on resources that are used to conduct
business. Such activities have even impended certain impacts on the community and society
surrounding such businesses as well. Thus, the research here has been conducted by analyzing
several articles and journals of business ethics such that issues can be diagnosed deeply. Certain
integral articles that have been used for analysis are; K. Bakker (2007), “The “commons” versus
the “commodity”: Alter‐globalization, anti‐privatization and the human right to water in the
global south.” It is covered in the Antipode, pages 430 to 455 discusses various concerns of
common people as wthose against commodities (Bakker, The “commons” versus the
“commodity”: Alter‐globalization, anti‐privatization and the human right to water in
the global south, 2007). This journal is critical as it addresses a criticla ethical business
questions regarding whether commodities hold more value over human life.
In the second journal by D. Groenfeldt (2010), “The next nexus: Environmental ethics, water
management and climate change.” In Water Alternatives, page 575 analyses critical ethical
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concerns reagrding impact of conduct in business on water, climate and other enviromental
aspects (Groenfeldt, 2010). P. D. Yeow (2014), “Bags for life: The embedding of ethical
consumerism.” In the Journal of Business Ethics, pages 87 to 99 understands the odds of
consumerism in the conduct of business and its impact on consumers (Yeow, 2014). M.
Alzola (2008), “When urgency matters. On non-discretionary corporate social responsibility.” In
the Human Systems Management, pages 273 to 282 includes several discussion concerning
corporate social responsibilities application in businesses (Alzola, 2008). Thus, the scope of
research and discussion concerns four major areas of discussions pertaining to following research
areas as;
 Ethical conerns of business on general public
 Ethical conerns of business on environment
 Ethical conerns of business regarding corporate social responsibility
 Ethical conerns of business in regards to its impact on consumers
Discussion
Application of business ethics includes fairness of dealings in businesses with objective of
creating a win-win situation for the company and employee, consumer or society at general.
Ethics needs to be applied on every part of a business for the purpose of making profits
(Voegtlin, 2014). The key to incorporating ethics in business lies in inclusion of ethics into
individuals making it a part of organisational culture. It has been seen that ethics can have
significant positive impacts and benefits in a business conduct. Multidimensional impacts of
ethics are in attracting investors, consumers, employees and society at large towards the
corporation. As ethics implications and concerns can be of varied nature and innumerable in
number, four integral areas are discussed in the essay. Firstly, corporations in order to earn extra
ordinary revenues have often ignored public and society at large. There has been several cases
where high levels of toxicity have been found in consumable items, children have been sold toys
made from recycled plastics, disrupted labor rules leading to suicides and so on (Delaney,
2013). Such implications of businesses are on the rise hence, corporations needs to figure out a
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