What is “business ethics”?

There are various different ways to look at ethical behaviour but all of them are
based on individual behaviour in which the same rule applies to everyone alike.
Someone might see something as ethical and the other may not this has been
explained by the example where clemency might be granted to a violator who
commits violations of the code under certain circumstances. Yet a mother
stealing to feed a starving child might be excused. Differences due to different
social or cultural mores might also be accepted. As a result, practices of
questionable morality in one locality might not only be considered acceptable,
they could be considered quite ethical.

Extortion and Bribery

Bribery is highly undesirable from the viewpoint of victim from which the bribe
has been extorted and it had been made illegal in the most countries by a law
prohibiting the payment of bribes to obtain foreign contracts. This was cited as a
gross violation of "business ethics." But is paying bribes itself the violation of
laws and business ethics? Most countries have laws against bribery. Yet it is a
fact that bribery, as we define it, is routine and expected in some of these
countries. For example, some countries that expect bribes as the traditional way
of doing business in their country. If a private citizen who was extorted to pay a
bribe to a criminal might be considered helpless or a victim of intimidation. And
certainly, paying extortion was never desirable. But this was clearly not an
ethical issue on the part of the individual forced to pay. Theses business ethics
are not deemed immoral or unethical if done by private citizens but they
become immoral and illegal if done by business organisations. This might be
the wrong thing to do but this is not “business ethics”.

The Ethics of Social Responsibility

The ethics of social responsibility essentially says that someone in power, a
CEO, a king, a president, has a higher duty if his behaviour can be argued that it
confers benefits on others. So, it is wrong to lie, but in the interests of "the
country" or "the company," or "the organization," it sometimes has to be
done. This concept is not suitable to be adopted as business ethics because it
would become a tool of a business leader to justify what would be clearly be
unethical behaviour for anyone else. 

The Ethics of Prudence

To be prudent means to be careful or cautious. It is a rather unusual philosophy
for an ethical approach, but admittedly it has some benefits to it. It is shown by
by the example of Harry Truman who at the time was a U.S. Senator who gave
this advice to a general officer witness before his committee in the early years
of World War II: "Generals should never do anything that needs to be explained
to a Senate Committee — there is nothing one can explain to a Senate
Committee." This approach was thought of as a good advice of staying out of
trouble, but it is not much of a basis for ethical business decision making. For
one thing, it doesn’t tell you anything about the right kind of behaviour. For
another there are decisions that a leader must take which are risky and which
may be difficult to explain, especially if things go wrong. But they may
nevertheless be the correct decisions to take.

The Ethics of Profit

The ethics of profit are not about limiting profits but much to the contrary it
would be socially irresponsible and unethical if a business did not show a profit
at least equal to the cost of capital because failing to do so would waste
society’s resources. profit as an ethical "metric" rest on very weak moral
grounds as an incentive and could only be justified as such if it were a genuine
cost and especially if it were the only way to maintain jobs and to grow new one

Confucian Ethics
Confucian ethics the rules are the same for everyone, but there are different
general rules which vary according to five basic relationships, all based on
interdependence. These five are superior and subordinate, father and child,
husband and wife, oldest brother and sibling and friend and friend. The right
behaviour in each case differs in order to optimize the benefits to both parties in
each relationship. Confucian ethics demands equality of obligations, of parents
to children and vice versa; of bosses to subordinates and vice versa. All have
mutual obligations. But this ideology is not considered as ethical in most of the
world where one side has obligations and the other side rights or entitlements.
But this system cannot be applied as business ethics because this system deals
with issues between individuals and not groups.