Business is about business, not about ethics - which is only for philosophers, professors, or theologists. This is how cartoonists joke about "business ethics". But actually business ethics is important. State and briefly explain three convincing reasons why ethics matters for business.
1.individuals get sentenced for crimes they commit. For example:
Bernhard Madoff
biggest financial fraud in history:
cleverly defrauded investors
for around 15 billion (!!!) US dollars
2009: maximum sentence
2.companies get bancrot and loose their reputation and customers, their market share.
Example:
ENRON, energy firm, Texas:
manipulated their accounting
Arthur Andersen: thumbs up + cash in
When it got known, they shredded all documents related to Enron audit.
Convicted for obstruction of justice
Reputation irreparably damaged
End of the company
3.societies get damaged and human lives destroyed or lost. Environment gets polluted or damaged. Tradegies happen.
Example:
Bhopal gas tragedy
Gas leak incident, India, 1984, considered the world's worst industrial disaster
Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL)
pesticide plant in Bhopal
558.125 people injured
-3.900 severe permanently disabling
injuries (blindness, brain damages,
paralyses, sterility and others)
-8.000 deaths
Expain the difference between the terms "morality" and "ethics" ?
Morality:
The social norms, values, beliefs which define what is right and wrong in social interaction.
The study of morality: the explication/development of rules and principles that define what is right and wrong in social interaction.
Ethics rationalizes morality.
Morality: shows up in your feeling that something is right or wrong.
Ethics: is about what kind of reasoning might justify right or wrong.
“Moral problem”/”ethical problem” can refer to the same situation.
In the film "The Corporation" US shareholder activist Robert Monks states:
"A corporation is an externalizing machine in the same way that a shark is killing machine. Each one is designed in a very efficient way, to accomplish particual objectives, there isnt any question of maleviolence or of will. The enterprise has within in, and the shark has within it, those characteristics that enable it to do for which it was designed."
a. What is an externality?
externality: the effect of a transaction between 2 parties on a third party who has not consented to, or played any role in, the carrying out of that transaction.
b.What does it mean that corporations are externalizing machines?
Corporations are designed to create externalities, inflict (negative) effects on third parties...
to human beings, their lives and health, to society, the public good, to animals and the environment.
What does the term "social enterprise" refer to?
The company has a social goal – its founders gave it a social mission.
A social enterprise Mission:
create social value alongside commercial value.
The investor has a social goal & invests into companies…
We can say that greed rules the marketplace and the most of the things that happen in economy.
The greed of corporations for maximizing profits.
Negative externalities from corporations are for us to see in its extreme forms everywhere in the world.
Human beings, animals and the environment gets sick and even dies, because of so many companies ignore the rest of the world and are only about maximizing their profits at any cost for everyone else, creating negative externalities.
The so much important output goes alongside many negative externalities for all of us.
Humans have entered an unofficial, but scientific period named "anthropocene" period. It is the time since industrialisation (beginning of the 19th century). Since that time we are having an effect on the planet that has to be compared with any Ice Age or Comet Impact. We have such a situation because of the economic greed.
Nowadays we talk about the 6th mass extinction on planet earth.
The corporations, huge corporations are particularly responsible for this extinction. They could make less profits and be more ethical, but they never stopped and now the whole planet has to pay the bitter price for their greedy game.
In devilish ways we talk about a demon Mammoth, who rules people's minds and economy, he looks down on earth and makes people jealous at what others have and he is all about money, making more money. This is all this demon knows.
I recommend to watch this movies/clips:
"The corporation"
"Rogue Trading"
"The holocene (6th) mass extinction of Life on Earth" is a short eyes opening clip.
it opens eyes for what really happened on the planet and why the world is the way it is nowadays.
We rarely think about animals or plants, but all we think about is other humans and interaction with them. No matter where we look, there are too many of us and unfortunately people could not stop from getting less at cost of the world (other humans environment, animals,...)
Enough should be actually enough, but I guess it is a lack of empathy and a focus towards pure profit, pure output without caring for the rest.
Very egoistic and brutal economical behaviour, that costs too much on a long term scale for such a short period of pleasure and progress.
100 or 200 years of "easier time" with more profits are nothing compared to the "real hard times" coming during the next 1000 or 2000 years, if not longer suffering periods. Without animals, without insects, without fresh water, with natural disasters, polluted air, all sorts of cancer types, other spreading diseases and mutations, mental and physical disruption, overpopulation, radioactive polution, lack of any natural resources and a sick life style for all of our mentally disrupted "cyborg-children".
It is definitely over with planet earth and we should hurry to find new planets to live on or human extinction through negative externalities of industrial and technical process and its global use for profits is the next coming soon.
We rarely think about animals or plants, but all we think about is other humans and interaction with them. No matter where we look, there are too many of us and unfortunately people could not stop from getting less at cost of the world (other humans environment, animals,...)
Enough should be actually enough, but I guess it is a lack of empathy and a focus towards pure profit, pure output without caring for the rest.
Very egoistic and brutal economical behaviour, that costs too much on a long term scale for such a short period of pleasure and progress.
100 or 200 years of "easier time" with more profits are nothing compared to the "real hard times" coming during the next 1000 or 2000 years, if not longer suffering periods. Without animals, without insects, without fresh water, with natural disasters, polluted air, all sorts of cancer types, other spreading diseases and mutations, mental and physical disruption, overpopulation, radioactive polution, lack of any natural resources and a sick life style for all of our mentally disrupted "cyborg-children".
It is definitely over with planet earth and we should hurry to find new planets to live on or human extinction through negative externalities of industrial and technical process and its global use for profits is the next coming soon.
