Ethical Influences in Business

Business ethics shapes work quality. Along with personal ethics, businesses and governments establish the rules of conduct or codes of conduct to define their normative ethics in such areas as professional conduct, stockholder relationships and social responsibility. Without solid business ethics creating a positive professional image is impossible. Violate a normative business ethic and you can lose your job or go to jail.

Stockholder Ethics

Stockholders purchase business ownership in the form of financial stocks. Stockholders do not operate daily business operations so they must trust a business's ethic to correctly manage the business for profit. Governments create normative business ethics to regulate the financial management of stock companies, the sale of stocks and the distribution of stocks. The Securities and Exchange Commission forms normative ethics and monitors them through stock market and financial over site. States regulate ethics by requiring companies that sell stock to define their normative ethics within a document called The Articles of Incorporation.

Professional Ethics

Normative ethics for professionals fall into three categories consequence, societal and personal. Businesses and governments define consequential normative ethics through the establishment of business codes of conduct and government regulation. Society's standards of good behavior form societal normative ethics while families or person's religion defines personal normative ethics.

Professionals are often required to follow normative ethics from multiple categories. For example, employees practicing racial bias may face government, business and societal censure. Other professional normative ethics such as prohibitions concerning theft can also include religious normative ethic violations thereby creating guilt in the perpetrator.

Social Responsibility

Social responsibility defines a business' normative ethical obligations to society and their employees. Social responsibilities to workers are often a result of government normative ethic codes in the form regulatory laws for employees. Businesses define employee and employer normative ethics through the codes of conduct they enforce in the work place such as sexual harassment policies.

Other socially responsible ethics in business are developed by both government agencies and societal opinion as in the case of environmental responsibility, both government regulators and public organizations often review a business' environmental policy and often have input into formation of such normative ethics.

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References:

"Business Ethics Quarterly" The normative theories of business ethics: a guide for the perplexed; J. Hasnas, January 1998 p. 19-42

University of Tennessee: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy-Ethics

Wiley Publishing: Business Ethics and Normative Theories

American Bar Association: The Role of Codes of Conduct for Legal Professionals in the Effort to Eliminate the Culture of Corruption

Business for Social Responsibility: Values

U.S. Department of Labor: Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization

Investor.gov: The Role of the SEC

Illinois Secretary of State: Articles of Incorporation

University of Utah: Business Ethics Fundamentals