Ethics and Ethical Decisions in Business Essay Example

The lecture explained that ethics is the baseline for the rest of one's life and that the consequences of making any ethical decisions can change one's life either for the better or for the worst. Ethics was explained as the code of moral standards that explains the standards, values, ideals, principles, virtues, and conscience. It was explained as a matter of choices where one is torn in an ethical dilemma of a right and a wrong choice such as a local culture conflict with company culture. The theories or ethics include ethical universalism that comprises of rightness, ethical relativism that explains the dependence on stimuli, integrative social contracts theory that explains the rightness with an exception, whereas utilitarianism explains on the benefits that outweigh some other things such as assassination.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

It was noted that ethics is applied in various places including love and dating sites where people lure each other, in parenting, where parents expect children to do what they say, in business, in sports, in politics, in wars to know whom the survivor is and decide on whether to eliminate them or walk away. Ethics follow stimuli in that people adapt to another place's culture and do what other people do. Ethical theories are also applied in other areas including kickbacks in countries such as France, alcohol and sexual relationships such as prostitution. Ethics is also perceived as a matter of perspective on an individual, or retroactively though judgment on future happenings from past occurrences. Ethical relativism can be related to a situation when DEA agents arranged for a prostitute for secret service agent, an unfair situation that led to crucifixion by public opinion hence, his resigning.

Various factors were mention as the influences of ethical behaviors, which most of them are internal factors. However, some are in person-related such as family and culture, organization-related such as management behavior or environment-related including laws and regulations. Some of these factors solidify individual internal decisions. Running a business requires ethics consideration not to compromise one's own internal factors but enhance positivity including profits and decisions that positively affect the business. The federal law of the US was given as an example of business conducted founded on ethical principles as they would need to make a lot of decisions. However some of the drawbacks to business ethics were listed as considering business to be business only, personal considerations, pressure on managers, as well as a consideration of the unethical not to be illegal. One of the people dedicated to high standards of ethical behavior is the moral manager. However, the immoral manager opposes the ethical activities of a moral manager such as ignoring ethical principles in decision making.

Some fails in ethical dilemma were explained as having borrowers such as self-employment, and credit investors such as private investors for multiple housing. Others include lenders, loan brokers, appraisers, and real estate agents. The deadliest effect of making wrong decisions in a business is a country's recession. Some of the measures to making ethical decisions in business include formalizing values and ethics, formal training, and having consequences for unethical behavior. Some of the ethical tests that are important for making any ethical decisions include transparency, effect, and fairness.

Conclusion

The lecture was informative in that the concept of ethics was well explained regarding the theories involved, where the theories are applied, how ethics is perceived, the factors that lead to unethical behaviors and examples of how ethics apply to various businesses. Ethical decisions are, therefore, important, and making them would require one to perceive and eliminate every unethical option hence; select the best ethical alternatives. Making effective decisions is a matter of thinking about choices concerning their ability to meet set goals.