Business Ethics

Business ethics is a form of applied ethics that examines ethical principles and moral or ethical problems that arise in a business environment.

In the increasingly conscience-focused marketplaces of the 21st century, the demand for more ethical business processes and actions (known as ethicism) is increasing. Simultaneously, pressure is applied on industry to improve business ethics through new public initiatives and laws (e.g. higher UK road tax for higher-emission vehicles). Businesses can often attain short-term gains by acting in an unethical fashion; however, such antics tend to undermine the economy over time.

General business ethics

This part of business ethics overlaps with the philosophy of business, one of the aims of which is to determine the fundamental purposes of a company. If a company's main purpose is to maximize the returns to its shareholders, then it should be seen as unethical for a company to consider the interests and rights of anyone else.

•          Corporate social responsibility or CSR: an umbrella term under which the ethical rights and duties existing between companies and society is debated.
•          Issues regarding the moral rights and duties between a company and its shareholders: fiduciary responsibility, stakeholder concept v. shareholder concept.
•          Ethical issues concerning relations between different companies: e.g. hostile take-overs, industrial espionage.
•          Leadership issues: corporate governance.
•          Political contributions made by corporations.
•          Law reform, such as the ethical debate over introducing a crime of corporate manslaughter.
•          The misuse of corporate ethics policies as marketing instruments.

Ethics of accounting information

•          Creative accounting, earnings management, misleading financial analysis.
•          Insider trading, securities fraud, bucket shops, forex scams: concerns (criminal) manipulation of the financial markets.
•          Executive compensation: concerns excessive payments made to corporate CEO's and top management.
•          Bribery, kickbacks, facilitation payments: while these may be in the (short-term) interests of the company and its shareholders, these practices may be anti-competitive or offend against the values of society.

Ethics of human resource management

•          The ethics of human resource management (HRM) covers those ethical issues arising around the employer-employee relationship, such as the rights and duties owed between employer and employee.
•          Discrimination issues include discrimination on the bases of age (ageism), gender, race, religion, disabilities, weight and attractiveness. See also: affirmative action, sexual harassment.
•          Issues surrounding the representation of employees and the democratization of the workplace: union busting, strike breaking.
•          Issues affecting the privacy of the employee: workplace surveillance, drug testing.
•          Issues affecting the privacy of the employer: whistle-blowing.
•          Issues relating to the fairness of the employment contract and the balance of power between employer and employee: slavery, indentured servitude, employment law.
•          Occupational safety and health.

 Ethics of sales and marketing

•          Pricing: price fixing, price discrimination, price skimming.
•          Anti-competitive practices: these include but go beyond pricing tactics to cover issues such as manipulation of loyalty and supply chains. See: anti-competitive practices, antitrust law. 
•          Specific marketing strategies: greenwash, bait and switch, shill, viral marketing, spam (electronic), pyramid scheme, planned obsolescence.
•          Content of advertisements: attack ads, subliminal messages, sex in advertising, products regarded as immoral or harmful
•          Children and marketing: marketing in schools.
•          Black markets, grey markets.

Ethics of production

•          Defective, addictive and inherently dangerous products and services (e.g. tobacco, alcohol, weapons, motor vehicles, chemical manufacturing, bungee jumping).
•          Ethical relations between the company and the environment: pollution, environmental ethics, carbon emissions trading
•          Ethical problems arising out of new technologies: genetically modified food, mobile phone radiation and health.
•          Product testing ethics: animal rights and animal testing, use of economically disadvantaged groups (such as students) as test objects.

Ethics of intellectual property, knowledge and skills

•          Patent infringement, copyright infringement, trademark infringement.
•          Misuse of the intellectual property systems to stifle competition: patent misuse, copyright misuse, patent troll, submarine patent.
•          Even the notion of intellectual property itself has been criticised on ethical grounds: see intellectual property.
•          Employee raiding: the practice of attracting key employees away from a competitor to take unfair advantage of the knowledge or skills they may possess.
•          The practice of employing all the most talented people in a specific field, regardless of need, in order to prevent any competitors employing them.
•          Bioprospecting (ethical) and biopiracy (unethical).
•          Business intelligence and industrial espionage.

International business ethics

•          The search for universal values as a basis for international commercial behaviour.
•          Comparison of business ethical traditions in different countries.
•          Comparison of business ethical traditions from various religious perspectives.
•          Ethical issues arising out of international business transactions; e.g. bioprospecting and biopiracy in the pharmaceutical industry; the fair trade movement; transfer pricing.
•          Issues such as globalization and cultural imperialism.
•          Varying global standards - e.g. the use of child labor.
•          The way in which multinationals take advantage of international differences, such as outsourcing production (e.g. clothes) and services (e.g. call centres) to low-wage countries.
•          The permissibility of international commerce with pariah states.