Professional Ethics

HU-223

Instructor
Dr. Ehsan ul Hassan
Ethics and
Business

Chapter 1
 Ethical issues in Business
3

Technology consists of all those methods, processes, and tools that humans
invent to manipulate and control their environment.

The use of extremely powerful and compact

Info-technology computers, the Internet, wireless communications,
digitalization technologies used for information.
issues
Technology issues

Cyber space A term used to denote the existence of information on

an electronic network of linked computer systems.
Technology

A new field that encompasses the development of

Nano-Technology tiny artificial structures only nanometers (billionths
of a meter) in size.

A large variety of new techniques that allows change

Genetic Engineering
in the genes of the cells of humans, animals, and
plants.
 Risk involved in Technology
• Are the risks of a new technology predictable?
• How large are the risks and are they reversible?
• Are the benefits worth the potential risks, and who
should decide?
• Do those persons on whom the risks will fall know
about the risk, and have they consented to bear these
risks?
• Will they be justly compensated for their losses?
• Are the risks fairly distributed among the various parts
of society, including poor and rich, young and old,
future generations and present ones?
 The worldwide process by which the economic and social
systems of nations have become connected facilitating
between them the flow of goods, money, culture, and
people.

Multinational
issues
International issues

Benefits of Globalization Corporation

A company that
• It bring jobs, skills, income, and technology maintains manufacturing,
International

to regions of the world that were formerly marketing, service, or

underdeveloped, raising the standard of administrative operations
living in these areas and providing in several host countries.
consumers everywhere with lower-priced
goods.
• It enabled nations to specialize in producing
and exporting those goods and services that
they can produce most efficiently, and then
Ethical
trade for what they do not make.
Relativism
Drawbacks of Globalization
• It has benefited developed nations that have high-value products to sell (such
as high-tech products), leaving many poorer nations behind.
• It brought Western culture everywhere driving out distinctive local cultures
and traditions that are in danger of diminishing or disappearing altogether.
• Multinationals can now pull their operations out of one country and insert
them into another that offers cheaper labor, less stringent laws, or lower
taxes. This ability to move operations from nation to nation, enables the
multinational to play one country off against another.
• When companies move their operations from one country to another in
search of cheaper labor, they close down factories in their home countries,
leaving thousands of workers there without jobs.
• Multinationals sometimes import technologies or products into developing
nations that cannot yet deal with their risks.
 Include differences in laws, governments, practices,
Difference of levels of development, cultural understandings. Raise
nations the question whether managers in foreign countries
should follow local standards or their home standards.
issues
International issues

What should the manager of a multinational do?

• Managers from developed nations should try

International

to stick to the higher standards that are typical

in their home countries.
• Managers should always follow local practices
and laws.
• When judging the ethics of a
particular policy, practice, or action in a
foreign country, they must take into account
the nature of the country’s laws, how corrupt
and how representative its government is, what
the country’s level of technological, social and
economic development is.
 There are no ethical standards that are absolutely
Ethical
true and that apply or should be applied to the
Relativism
W companies and people of all societies.
he
• n that should be used to evaluate the ethics of
There are no moral standards
in what culture they belong to.
everyone’s actions no matter
A person’s action is morallyR
issues
International issues

• o
right
accepted in that person’s culture,m
if it accords with the ethical standards
and is wrong if it violates the ethical
e,
dowhether a person’s action is
standards accepted in that person’s culture.
International

• There is no rational way of determining

morally right (or wrong) other than by asking aswhether the members of
the person’s own society believe it is morally right R
(or wrong).
om
an
’s
do
 Objections to Ethical Relativism
• There are certain basic moral standards that the
members of any society must accept if that
society is to survive and if its members are to
interact with each other effectively.
• Many apparent moral differences among societies
turn out on closer examination to mask deeper
underlying similarities.
• When two people or two groups have different
beliefs is that at least one of them is wrong.
• If ethical relativism were true, then it would not
make sense to criticize the practices of other
societies so long as their practices conformed to
their own standards.

INTEGRATIVE SOCIAL CONTRACTS THEORY

Micro-social
Hyper norms
norms

Consist of those moral standards Norms that differ from one community
that should be applied to people to another and that should be applied to
in all societies people only if their community accepts
those particular norms