Ethics and Social Responsibility

Essay by tillabolaUniversity, Master's September 2004

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Introduction

Our world is made up many different groups, with their own moral norms and there is no way to choose between these competing sets. What will be right for one group, will be wrong for another. Given this, should managers ignore ethics and look only to their self-interests for guidance when making decisions in their organizations?

The field of business ethics has traditionally been the domain of philosophers, academics and social critics. Consequently, much of today's literature about business ethics is not geared toward the practical needs of leaders and managers, the people primarily responsible for managing ethics in the workplace.

In my essay I will try to identify those different groups, their moral norms, ethics, ethical approach on managing, social responsibilities of organizations, and I will try to express my opinion, if managers should behave within those moral norms all the time and in any situation.

Groups with different moral norms

There are many different organizations in the world with different purpose of existence.

Governments are known as most powerful among these. Governments' responsibility is to set regulations and legislations, and control of performance of these regulations and legislations, in order to all other organizations perform within legal norms, and usually these regulations are ethical standards reflected in legal framework.

"Although, governments have different cultural, political and administrative environments, they often confront similar ethical challenges, and the responses in their ethics management show common characteristics." http://www1.oecd.org/puma/ethics/pubs/pb4.pdf

According to Stoner et al (1994), in their concern with the internal environment of organizations managers should pay attention for importance of the external environments: political, economic and cultural trends in society, and how external groups responded to the organization. The external environment has both direct action elements. Direct action elements of the total environment are those that directly affect and are...