The standards of moral behavior. behaviors that are accepted by society as right versus wrong.

Standards of moral behavior; behavior accepted by society as right versus wrong

Compliance-based ethics codes

Ethical standards that emphasize preventing unlawful behavior by increasing control and by penalizing wrongdoers

Integrity-based ethics codes

Ethical standards that define the organization's guiding values, create an environment that supports ethically sound behavior, and stress a shared accountability among employees

Insiders who report illegal or unethical behavior

Corporate Social Responsibility

A business's concern for the welfare of society

The dimension of social responsibility that includes charitable donations

Corporate Social Initiatives

Enhanced forms of corporate philanthropy directly related to the company's competencies.

The dimension of social responsibility that includes everything from hiring minority workers to making safe products.

The dimension of social responsibility that refers to the position a firm takes on social and political issues.

An unethical activity in which insiders use private company information to further their own fortunes or those of their family and friends

A systematic evaluation of an organizations progress toward implementing socially responsible and responsive programs.

How is legality different from ethics?

Ethics goes beyond obeying laws to include abiding by the moral standards accepted by society.

What three questions should you answer when faced with a potentially unethical action?

1) Is it legal?
2) Is it Balanced?
3) How will it make me feel?

What's the difference between compliance-based and integrity-based ethics codes?

Compliance-based are concerned with avoiding legal punishment, whereas integrity-based define an organization's guiding values, create an environment that supports ethically sound behavior and has a shared accountability among employees.

Describe management's role in setting ethical standards.

Management sets formal ethical standards. Their tolerance or intolerance of ethical misconduct also influences employees more than written words (actions speak louder etc)

Describe how businesses demonstrate corporate responsibility to stakeholders.

1) goods and services of real value for 'customers'
2)Makes money for 'investors'
3)Creates jobs for 'employees' and maintain job security as well as hard work and talent are rewarded
4)Create new wealth for 'society', promote social justice and contribute to making its own environment a better place.

How are a company's social responsibility efforts measured?

A corporate social audit measures progress toward social responsibility. Some believe an audit should add together the organizations positive actions and then subtract the negative effects to get a net social benefit.

Analyze the role of the U.S. in influencing ethical behavior and social responsibility in global markets

Many US businesses are demanding socially responsible behavior from international suppliers. Ensuring they don't violate US human rights and environmental standards (sweat shops and pollution etc)

Manuel Velasquez, Claire Andre, Thomas Shanks, S.J., and Michael J. Meyer

Ethics is based on well-founded standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or specific virtues.

Some years ago, sociologist Raymond Baumhart asked business people, "What does ethics mean to you?" Among their replies were the following:

"Ethics has to do with what my feelings tell me is right or wrong."
"Ethics has to do with my religious beliefs."
"Being ethical is doing what the law requires."
"Ethics consists of the standards of behavior our society accepts."
"I don't know what the word means."

These replies might be typical of our own. The meaning of "ethics" is hard to pin down, and the views many people have about ethics are shaky.

Like Baumhart's first respondent, many people tend to equate ethics with their feelings. But being ethical is clearly not a matter of following one's feelings. A person following his or her feelings may recoil from doing what is right. In fact, feelings frequently deviate from what is ethical.

Nor should one identify ethics with religion. Most religions, of course, advocate high ethical standards. Yet if ethics were confined to religion, then ethics would apply only to religious people. But ethics applies as much to the behavior of the atheist as to that of the devout religious person. Religion can set high ethical standards and can provide intense motivations for ethical behavior. Ethics, however, cannot be confined to religion nor is it the same as religion.

Being ethical is also not the same as following the law. The law often incorporates ethical standards to which most citizens subscribe. But laws, like feelings, can deviate from what is ethical. Our own pre-Civil War slavery laws and the old apartheid laws of present-day South Africa are grotesquely obvious examples of laws that deviate from what is ethical.

Finally, being ethical is not the same as doing "whatever society accepts." In any society, most people accept standards that are, in fact, ethical. But standards of behavior in society can deviate from what is ethical. An entire society can become ethically corrupt. Nazi Germany is a good example of a morally corrupt society.

Moreover, if being ethical were doing "whatever society accepts," then to find out what is ethical, one would have to find out what society accepts. To decide what I should think about abortion, for example, I would have to take a survey of American society and then conform my beliefs to whatever society accepts. But no one ever tries to decide an ethical issue by doing a survey. Further, the lack of social consensus on many issues makes it impossible to equate ethics with whatever society accepts. Some people accept abortion but many others do not. If being ethical were doing whatever society accepts, one would have to find an agreement on issues which does not, in fact, exist.

What, then, is ethics? Ethics is two things. First, ethics refers to well-founded standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or specific virtues. Ethics, for example, refers to those standards that impose the reasonable obligations to refrain from rape, stealing, murder, assault, slander, and fraud. Ethical standards also include those that enjoin virtues of honesty, compassion, and loyalty. And, ethical standards include standards relating to rights, such as the right to life, the right to freedom from injury, and the right to privacy. Such standards are adequate standards of ethics because they are supported by consistent and well-founded reasons.

Secondly, ethics refers to the study and development of one's ethical standards. As mentioned above, feelings, laws, and social norms can deviate from what is ethical. So it is necessary to constantly examine one's standards to ensure that they are reasonable and well-founded. Ethics also means, then, the continuous effort of studying our own moral beliefs and our moral conduct, and striving to ensure that we, and the institutions we help to shape, live up to standards that are reasonable and solidly-based.

This article appeared originally in Issues in Ethics IIE V1 N1 (Fall 1987). Revised in 2010.

What are the standards of moral behavior?

Who set the standards of right and wrong as defined by ethics?

What is based Ethics Code emphasizes the prevention of unlawful behavior by increasing control and penalizing wrongdoers?

What is ethical behavior?