What is Business Ethics and what does it mean to organizations and individuals?
Business ethics are the unwritten rules that require businesses to operate in an honest, open, and moral manner, treating all parties fairly and honestly. Recently there has been an emphasis on improving business ethics after many companies and their executives were found to be operating dishonestly, hiding information, reporting fake data, stealing money, and cheating their customers, shareholders, and taxing authorities. Companies like Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, and many others were involved in such situations and many of their executives are now serving jail sentences. As a result many businesses have instituted ethical rules and requirements, schools are offering courses in ethics, and ethical managers are demonstrating proper ethics by their own behavior. More recently the process of backdating executives’ stock options, which essentially results in stealing from shareholders, has been disclosed in hundreds of businesses, showing that we still have a long way to go in business eth
