CHAPTER 4 Flashcards
Refresher (25 cards)
What is ethics?
The inner guiding moral principles, values, and beliefs that people use to analyse or interpret a situation and then decide what is the right or appropriate way to behave.
Ethics indicates what is inappropriate behaviour and what a person should do to avoid harming another person.
Why is it important to discuss ethics?
Because ethics affects how people decide what is right or wrong in various situations, impacting individual and collective behavior.
What is an ethical dilemma?
The difficulty people find themselves in when they have to decide if they should act in a way that might help another person or group, even if it goes against their own self-interest.
What is the difference between ethical behaviour and legal behaviour?
Ethical behaviour is guided by moral principles, while legal behaviour is dictated by laws that can change over time.
What governs business actions?
Many different laws, including the Companies Act, Intellectual Property Law, Environmental Law, Consumer Protection Law, Tax Law, and Labour Law.
How do ethics and law change over time?
Ethical beliefs and laws evolve to reflect the changing beliefs of society.
What is a stakeholder?
People and groups that supply a company with its productive resources and thus have a claim or stake in the company.
Why is it important to talk about stakeholders?
Because stakeholders can directly benefit or be harmed by the company’s unethical actions.
What does the Utilitarian Rule state?
An ethical decision is one that produces the greatest good for the greatest number of people or does the least harm.
Who are considered the fathers of the utilitarian approach to ethics?
Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill.
What does the Justice Rule entail?
An ethical decision distributes benefits and harms fairly, equitably, or impartially among people and groups.
What is the Moral Rights Rule?
An ethical decision that best maintains and protects the fundamental rights and privileges of the people affected.
What is the Practical Rule in ethical decision making?
An ethical decision is one that a manager has no reluctance about communicating because society would find it acceptable.
What is the obstructionist approach to social responsibility?
Companies choose not to behave in a socially responsible way and instead behave unethically and illegally.
What are the four main sources of managerial ethics?
- Societal Ethics
- Occupational Ethics
- Individual Ethics
- Organisational Ethics
What are societal ethics?
Standards that govern how members of a society should deal with one another, involving issues like fairness, justice, and individual rights.
What do occupational ethics govern?
How members of a profession, trade, or craft should conduct themselves during work-related activities.
What are individual ethics?
Personal standards and values that determine how people view their responsibilities to others.
What does organisational ethics reflect?
The guiding practices and beliefs through which a particular company and its managers view their responsibility toward stakeholders.
What is the defensive approach to social responsibility?
Companies behave ethically to the extent that they stay within the law but do not engage in social responsibility beyond legal requirements.
What is the accommodative approach to social responsibility?
Companies behave legally and ethically, balancing the interests of different stakeholders as needed.
What is the proactive approach to social responsibility?
Companies actively embrace socially responsible behavior and promote the interests of all stakeholders.
What is an example of a company that engages in social responsibility?
Toms, which identifies global needs and creates products to address them while donating for each product sold.
What does behaving ethically build?
- Trust
- Reputation
