After realizing that a situation is unethical, the next question is, what do you do? A person`s action is based in part on his ethical philosophy. The environment in which we live and work also plays a role in our behaviour. This section describes the personal philosophies and legal factors that influence the decisions we make when faced with an ethical dilemma. 2. FAIRNESS All business and relationships should be based on a conscious commitment to fairness and treat others as you would like to be treated. Fairness requires treating all individuals equally and politely, never exercising power arbitrarily and never exploiting weaknesses or mistakes for personal or collective gain. The French pharmaceutical company Rhône-Poulenc Rorer has allowed foreign subsidiaries to complete the list of ethical principles of the company with their own proposals. Texas Instruments paid particular attention to international business ethics issues and created the Global Business Practices Council, composed of leaders from the countries in which the company operates. With the general intention of creating a “global, locally deployed ethical strategy,” the board`s mandate is to provide ethics education and create local processes that help managers of the company`s foreign business units resolve ethical conflicts. I believe that even routine corruption is intolerable.
Corruption undermines the efficiency and predictability of the market, ultimately depriving people of their right to a minimum standard of living. A certain level of ethical commitment – a certain sense that everyone plays by the rules – is necessary for a healthy economy. Who would be willing to invest without the ability to predict outcomes? 9. Organizations that comply with the law must fully comply with all applicable local, state, and federal laws and codes. Law-abiding companies and employees also adhere to industry and trade regulations, market standards, and any additional binding policies, practices, and organizational procedures. The third problem of absolutism is the belief in a global norm of ethical behavior. The context must shape ethical practice. Very low wages, for example, may be considered unethical in rich and advanced countries, but developing countries can act ethically by encouraging investment and improving living standards by accepting low wages. When people are malnourished or starving, a government may be wise to use more fertilizer to improve crop yields, even if it means settling for relatively high levels of thermal water pollution. Most who write about ethics do not make a clear distinction between ethics and morality.
The question of what is “right” or “morally correct” or “ethically correct” or “morally desirable” in each situation is phrased differently, but all the words and phrases are the same: which action is “better” in a moral or ethical sense than another action? People sometimes talk about morality as something personal, but see ethics as having broader social implications. Others see morality as the subject of a field of study, that field is ethics. Ethics would be the morality applied to a number of topics, including journalistic ethics, business ethics or the ethics of professionals such as doctors, lawyers and accountants. We will dare to define ethics, but for our purposes, ethics and morality will be used on an equal footing. But there are many cases where the answer to similar questions is no. Sometimes the standards of a host country are inadequate at all levels of economic development. If a country`s pollution standards are so low that working on an oil rig would greatly increase the risk of cancer, foreign oil companies should refuse to do business there. If the dangerous side effects of drug treatment outweigh its benefits, managers should not accept health standards that ignore the risks. When we talk about morality, we often use the word good; But this word can be confusing. When we say that Microsoft is a “good company,” we may make a statement about the investment potential of Microsoft stock or its market primacy, or its ability to win lawsuits or appeals or influence administrative authorities.
Less likely, though possibly, we are making a statement about Microsoft`s civic virtue and social responsibility. In the first set of judgments, we use the word good, but we mean something other than ethical or moral; It is only in the second case that we use the word well in its ethical or moral sense. People often equate respect for local traditions with cultural relativism. It`s not true. Some practices are clearly wrong. The tragic experience of Union Carbide in Bhopal, India, is an example of this. Company executives seriously underestimated the involvement of local management in the Bhopal plant to compensate for the country`s poor infrastructure and regulatory capacity. In the wake of the catastrophic gas leak, the lesson is clear: companies using advanced technologies in a developing country must assess that country`s ability to monitor its safe use. Since the Bhopal incident, Union Carbide has been a leader in advising companies on the safe use of hazardous technologies in developing countries. At the other end of the spectrum of cultural relativism is ethical imperialism, which commands people to do the same thing everywhere as at home. Again, this is a naturally appealing approach, but it is clearly inadequate. Take the example of the large American computer products company that introduced a course on sexual harassment at its Saudi Arabian facility in 1993.
Under the banner of global consistency, the instructors used the same approach to train Saudi managers that they had used with U.S. managers: participants were asked to discuss a case in which a manager makes sexually explicit remarks to a new employee over a drink in a bar. The instructors did not think about how the exercise would work in a culture with strict conventions that govern relations between men and women. As a result, the workouts were ridiculous. They stunned and insulted the Saudi participants, and the message of avoiding coercion and gender discrimination was lost. When it comes to shaping ethical behavior, companies must be guided by three principles. Many people make the mistake of thinking that obeying the law is synonymous with being an ethical person. This is called ethical legalism. This is not the case. Laws set minimum standards for ethical behaviour. Ethical people go beyond the law. While ethical people always try to be law-abiding, there may be instances where their sense of ethics tells them it`s best not to follow the law.
These situations are rare and should be based on strong ethical grounds.