Critical Thinking: Business Ethics

In the modern society, ethics is important and integral part of human life. Undoubtedly, this discipline is connected with morality and helps to define what is good or bad, right or wrong. Ethics is not just about conscience or feelings, being a religious person or law-abiding citizen, or copying someone’s actions because neither science nor technology can tell a person what to do. Ethics is about standards of conduct that promote humane attitudes to the world and issues that happen within its borders. According to the management essay writing services information, I would like to analyze three traditional ethical theories, such as deontology, utilitarianism, and virtue ethics, to show the relevance of this statement.

These key theories attempt to justify and specify moral principles and rules. Each theory focuses on various aspects of moral dilemmas and helps to find the most ethically correct solution. For instance, deontology is the ethical code that is based on duty and obligation. The philosopher Immanuel Kant believed that rightness or morality is determined by examining the nature of actions. As long as people act from the perspective of the duty, they act in a morally right way even if the act can have a bad consequence. In other words, in light of the ethics of duty, the ends, or outcomes, can never justify the means.

Furthermore, utilitarianism defines morality in actions that maximize the greatest good as “welfare” or “happiness” for the most people. In contrast to deontology, in utilitarian theory, the result does matter and always justifies the means.

Finally, virtue ethics describes the morality of agents, but not the morality of actions, and judges the character of a person. Aristotle believed that actions reflect virtuous character traits or habits which person acquires during the life.

The mix of such ethical approaches can be used in applied ethics, or business ethics. Corporate ethics is the study of values and rules which influence business decisions, along with the integration of ethics within the business environment. It is obvious that ethics should be a part of the business because the government cannot control and regulate behavior of people beyond the law. The business goal is to attract and retain customers as well as earn money. To achieve this goal, companies with good intentions have to generate and deliver goods that people like or want for the attractive prices, and to think what is right for promoting human welfare. This discipline provides specific guidance for the management and has ethical merits.

To explain the above principles in action, a scenario is analyzed. A distribution supervisor in a meat company has an ethical dilemma such as ensuring customer satisfactions while increasing company’s profits. Considering that the meat industry has faced much criticism lately, Americans are still one of the most meat-loving people on the earth. Despite of the fact that people like to eat meat, selling meat products has environmental implications and is related to animal suffering. Moreover, saturated fats in meat have unfavorable impact on human health. As a consequence, society members have to increase spending on health care. The best way to avoid such negative situations is that the food companies must produce and sell less meat. However, for businesses, this approach results in decrease in profit. Thus, business ethics is about social responsibilities and favorable outcomes for people.

Analyzing the case in light of deontological ethical theory, selling meat is right and good for the most humans because they like to eat meat. In this way, companies must produce more meat for satisfying the demand. On the other hand, utilitarianism theory emphasizes that bad health is not the greatest good for people who eat meat, and firms must produce less meat. According to virtue ethics, if I am vegetarian, I would not be the distribution supervisor in a meat company because of my virtue, such as love for animals.

In conclusion, I can state that ethics stimulates people to make a right choice when a few alternatives exist. At the same time, business ethics is a moral philosophy which is concerned with the interests of society and guides people to easier and more win-win decision making.