This essay is about the role of ethics and social responsibility in management.

Essay by nastalgiaUniversity, Bachelor's May 2002

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Principles of Management

Dec. 15, 2001

A Role of Ethics and Social Responsibilities in Management.

Ethics can be defined as a process of evaluating actions according to moral principal of values (A.Alhemoud). Throughout the centuries people were trying to choose between profit and moral. Perhaps, some of them obtain both, but every time it could have roused ethical issues. Those issues concern fairness, justice, rightness or wrongness; as a result it can only be resolved according to ethical standards. Setting the ethical standards for the way of doing business in corporation is primarily task of management. Corporations have to maintain the same standards as an individual person and, in addition, corporations, as organizational units, have their own social responsibilities toward customers, employees and society. However, any business should keep it?s original purpose of functioning - making profit. Balancing the traditional standards

of profitability and burden of social responsibilities is not an easy task.

In recent years it

has been a trend of setting standards of corporate ethics according to a high degree of

morale.

To be able to keep the ethical standards management must follow the law. However, there are some complications in enforcing it. The law affects and is affected by social forces and prevailing ethical standards. ?Although the law can codify societies ethical values, ethical decision making transcends the law in that 1.) The law deals with actions not with thoughts, and therefore it does not (and cannot) codify all ethical requirements; and 2.) An individual or a group may perceive a given law as immoral, not as a guide to ethical behavior? (Alhemoud, Ali ? Management Ethics is Smart Business?). How, then, can a company ensure that its code of ethics is both followed and enforced? ?...Defense firms such as General Dynamics and TRW, and an information...