ETHICS AND BUSINSS

ETHICS AND BUSINSS

OMAR ALALI

2004

[How far can business succeed without taking into consideration business ethics?]

INTRODUCTION

The world of business is the world of contradiction, and thus you can find in this world success and failure, dishonesty and honesty, loyalty and treason and so on. In business there are two main styles, capitalism and socialism. Admittedly, they have a great influence on the employees, managers and owners behaviour. Nowadays, business ethics has become a significant subject all over the world. In fact, this not only because of the importance of morals as part of people's lives, but also because unethical behaviour in business can lead to numerous economical, social and political problems such as suicide, unemployment, bankruptcy, price rises, level of living deteriorating, economic recession, etc. Now, what does business mean? What does ethics mean? What does business ethics mean? Why are ethics important and useful in business? What is unethical behaviour in business?

DEFINITION

Briefly, business means an activity in your life that you do to earn money for livelihood or gain, for instance, producing, buying, selling goods, or providing services for people or companies.

English: Bppceb company logo.

Journal of Business Ethics

Society for Business Ethics

Partly, ethics means a collection of ideas and rules which influences the behaviour of people. So, the definition of ethics is different from one country to another based on the ideas of right and wrong in each country. Now, what does business ethics mean?

In a few words it means applying the moral rules in work and business.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BUSINESS ETHICS

In fact, there are many advantageous of applying ethics in business. The following are some of these advantageous:

First, to encourage cooperation between companies; second, the realization of stability in the society. Also, according to Velasquez (1998), when employees feel that their company's decision-making processes are just, they will...