PHI FPX 2000 Assessment 2 Business Ethics and Corporate Responsibility
Capella University
PHI FPX 2000 Ethics
Prof. Name
November, 2024
Business Ethics and Corporate Responsibility
Business ethics and corporate responsibility talk about conducting business in line with the principles of morality, integrity, and accountability (Rendtorff, 2020). Ethical processes ensure fairness, transparency, and respect for all stakeholders, such as customers, employees, and the community, in the decision-making process. Corporate responsibility transcends making profits into some social and environmental challenges besides economic ones to ensure responsible and sustainable development. Most organizations that promote ethical practices foster fair labor policies, support ecological conservation, and engage in philanthropic activities. In the long term, this increases stakeholder trust and credibility, promotes stronger relationships, and builds stronger brands. Corporate responsibility further encourages businesses to look at their actions and assess their overall impact over time, ensuring a balance between profitability and well-being. Companies that integrate ethics into the strategies they have observe adherence to required legal standards while contributing positively to the community, thus creating value for society and for business itself. This way, growth will also be sustainable, thereby making success long-lived.
Ethical Issues and Their Relationships
They arise whenever persons or entities face situations that require them to make decisions testing their moral values and principles. Conflicts of interest, doubts regarding fairness, and situations between legal permissibility and moral correctness often feature in such dilemmas (Geisslinger et al., 2021). The following are some examples: honesty and confidentiality, fairness, and respect for others. Ethical dilemmas are complex not just because, for example, profit sometimes needs to be balanced against environmental sustainability or transparency against confidentiality, but also because such value clashes require a reasoned framework of values to guide decision-making and cause a person to act right, regardless of whether it is difficult or unpopular.
Ethical issues are therefore related but often overlap since a situation in one area can be affected by the problems in another. These include cost-cutting measures by firms, and raising different ethical issues regarding employee welfare, environmental impact, and consumer trust. Addressing these requires consideration of their broader implications to reach a balance that upholds ethical standards. Ethical decision-making is not the domain of individuals; decisions made by organizations should lead to policies and actions that reflect integrity and responsibility. By realizing that ethical issues are related to each other, people and firms can work towards solutions that would improve fairness and respect with social responsibility.
Stakeholders’ Primary Interests
The various roles and relationships within an organization have different stakes in an organization but mainly revolve around such expectations and the actions of an organization affecting them. Shareholders are mainly concerned with profitability aspects and yield from the investment. Employees generally care about job security, fair compensation, and a sound working environment (Soelton et al., 2021). The basic interests of customers would be the quality of products or services, value for money, and sound ethical practices. Communities are interested in the social responsibility and environmental responsibility of the organization, as well as its contributions to local development. Suppliers want reliable partnerships and fair terms, while regulators insist on compliance with laws and standards. The understanding of these diverse interests is essential for trust, positive relationship building, and long-term organizational success. Since aligning business objectives with stakeholder priorities would establish a balanced approach for sustainable growth and mutual benefits, companies can achieve such an objective.
Normative Ethical Theory
The normative ethical theory concerns the statement of principles or rules that guide people and organizations in terms of making distinctions between right and wrong (Wolniak, 2022). It helps assess actions in terms of their ethical value, and through this approach, it gives way to systematic approaches toward decisions. There are three major branches of normative ethical theories: consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics. Consequentialism considers the rightness or wrongness of an action by its consequences. Morality is constituted upon the greater good for the greatest number. Deontology focuses on duties and rules, stating that certain actions are morally obligatory even if their consequences are adverse. Virtue ethics’ particular emphasis is placed on the character and virtue of the moral agent and personal integrity and moral excellence. Thus, normative ethical theories are for guiding people about how to deal with complicated moral problems to make decisions that abide by ethical values and cultural requirements.
Milton Friedman’s Stakeholder’s Theory
Milton Friedman’s stakeholder theory asserts that a corporation’s first responsibility is to its shareholders, as the mission of a business must be to achieve profits with a maximum legal and ethical goal (Poff, 2023). The theory believes that focusing on wealth creation among shareholders is what creates economic efficiency and benefits society indirectly through job creation, innovation, and wealth generation. Friedman argued that doing much more than this weakens corporate resources and threatens the core responsibility of the company. At the same time, he remained true to the idea that the corporation should act ethically, follow the rule of law, and engage in fair business practices to make money. His view remains at odds with the more expansive stakeholder theories that suggest a balance between the interests of employees, customers, communities, the environment, and shareholders.
Traditional Theory of Normative Ethics
The traditional theory of normative ethics can be divided into three main approaches. These are consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics (Morrell & Dahlmann, 2022). In consequentialist methods, such as utilitarianism, what is right or wrong is determined by the outcome. The focus is on action to maximize overall happiness or well-being. On the other hand, deontologists such as Immanuel Kant focus more on duties and principles, holding that some actions are right or wrong in themselves, irrespective of their consequences. Virtue ethics has its basis in Aristotelian philosophy, focusing on the development of moral character and virtues like courage honesty, and compassion as the base for ethical behavior. That, plus the other theories, gives structured approaches toward the assessment of moral dilemmas and ethical decision-making, with each concentration going toward a different aspect of morality, namely, outcomes, rules, or character. Altogether, they can be considered to make up traditional normative ethics, providing different perspectives on what it means to act ethically.Also visit our site PHI FPX 2000 Assessment 3
