Journal # 1: Defining is the Best Way to Start

June 4, 2012

The main topic for today is Ethics and Business.  Throughout the entire class, we tackled the definition of ethics, which is the “activity of examining one’s moral standards or the moral standards of society and asking how these apply to our lives…reasonable or not”, and its different systems.  Afterwards, relating it to the values of an individual.  Today’s lesson made each of us more aware of the diverse paradigms, rules of conduct and its negative consequences if not followed.  All of these areas tackled are the basic notions for discussion to understand the importance of Corporate Social Responsibility. 

In my perspective, relating ethics to business can sometimes be contradicting because businesses tend to focus on improving their financial performance and sometimes disregarding ethics.  I feel like there are numerous corporations that conduct unethical operations to achieve higher profit, and in return, they execute philanthropic activities to redeem their reputation in the society.  With that, I believe that the values that their company has deemed to recognize are not properly established.  Every employee should be taught good ethics upon entering a company because it provides a solid foundation for them to have great decision-making skills, in terms of ethical behavior. 

    

Ethics is about doing the right thing and making the best decision for the benefit of the entire humankind.  With all of these in mind, I now believe that performing ethical business practices will help achieve a successful business.  This can be an advantage for a company because it helps in improving the relationships built with the different stakeholders.  Once a company makes an unethical decision, they are immediately burdened with risks.  Thus, it is vital to eliminate self-interest upon making decisions and focus on the good values established by the company, which are all expected by the stakeholders.  Having good ethics means having a good business because one is lessening the risks involved in running their operations.  I believe that keeping that in my mind will truly benefit me in the future, as I give importance to giving back to the society or simply emphasizing on the philanthropic responsibility of a company.