Reflection on Business Ethics

Running head: REFLECTION ON BUSINESS ETHICS
REFLECTION ON BUSINESS ETHICS
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1REFLECTION ON BUSINESS ETHICS
The Book Business Ethics has helped me to argue and analyze ethical dimension.
The chapter one of the book specifies the importance of business ethics. The first thing I
learned is the reason for studying about ethics in business. A business ethics is important for
a company that helps to bring substantial profits to a business. An organization’s norms,
values and principles originate from the organizational statements, individuals and also from
the legal system. The factors lead to this study as they are detrimental to a business. It helps
to improve the ethics of an employee or an individual, helps to make effective decisions for
the business that are detailed and complex, this also paves way for people with less
experience make organizational decisions and helps a person to identify and solve any ethical
issue instantly or in a less amount of time.
In this chapter I have learnt the things that fall under misconduct and the evolution of
the misconducts that have evolved with time. The issues like bribery, employee theft,
conflicts, misuse of resources of a company, fraud and harassment fall under misconducts
that are necessary to be addressed in order to sustain a business. The social and ethical
concerns have evolved and changed during the course of time. In 1960’s the issues were
related to the environment, work ethics and usage of drugs. In the 70’s issues like human
rights, covering of mistakes by the company, transparency these issues were raising. Then in
the 80’s illegal contracts, bribes, frauds took place. In the 90’s organizational ethical
misconduct, financial fraud was the main concerns. In the 2000’s with the invention and vast
use of internet cyber crimes became an important issue following with intellectual property
and global issues. Due to these issues there was various business ethics were introduced
during the time to solve the existing problems during their time. These problems paved way
for business ethics that helped build a good reputation of a company and also for the proper
functioning of a company. Proper business ethics help in customer satisfaction, trust and

2REFLECTION ON BUSINESS ETHICS
loyalty of the investors and employee trust and commitment finally results in profits for an
organization. This is interrelated and is beneficial for everyone who is part of this chain.
In the second chapter, I have learnt about the stakeholders. Their relationship between
them and social responsibility, their orientation in creating Corporate Social Responsibility
(CSR) and the role of the governance of a corporate in structuring social responsibility and
ethics. The first thing I have leant is about the two types of stakeholders one is the primary
the one that is beneficial for the company and whose resources and supports are needed by
the company like customers, shareholders and employees and the other one is the secondary
who are not related to the company directly like trade associations and media. These
stakeholders have a role to play for the success of a company. The stakeholders foster
decision making and provide resources that are necessary for the long term success of a
company. The stakeholder orientation of a company represents the amount a company looks
to the interest of their relevant stakeholders and attempts in addressing those interests.
Orientation of a strong stakeholder can pave way for competitive advantage a company.
Here I have also learnt about the different steps of social responsibility that are
philanthropic that means to give back something to the society, the next is economic that
means to increase the stakeholder value or health, the next is the legal that means to follow
the government laws and guidelines. These are important for a business to expand. However
there are issues in social responsibility as well like social issues, sustainability, corporate
governance and protection of the customers. These can be a hindrance to the growth of a
company as these are fur crucial points that help a business sustain and grow in the market.
The other thing about this chapter I learnt is about corporate governance and stake
holders. Corporate governance has two types of model one the shareholder model where the
company’s main goal is to maximize the wealth for the owners and the stakeholders and