Business Ethics
A general description of ethics as it pertains to the business world could be that it parallels any written laws that exist inside or outside of the business place. As federal, state and local governments have formed laws, so have most every corporations created their own. In many cases business ethics do conform to written law and is in agreement with what is considered either legal or illegal. Of course there are exceptions to this description. An example of an ethical decision that would be regarded as being illegal is a physician-assisted suicide. In contrast, an example of a legal decision being deemed as unethical is a Catholic priest relaying information that was obtained in a confession to law enforcement. A more concise description of business ethics is on a personal level. Every employee of a business or corporation should comply with ethical ideas such as honesty, fairness, consideration, judgement, and competence. Most of today's corporations have a written code of ethics and instruct their employees of these rules and regulations. An ethical decision that I was recently involved with was related to time reporting. My company has a strict rule that all hours worked must be reported accurately. A workweek
for my company begins on Friday and ends on Thursday, thus the time collector is looking for each employee's completed timesheet by close of business every Thursday. Normally I do not have any problems with turning in my time by 5:00pm on Thursdays. However, one Thursday I was working on a critical project that was not going to be completed by close of business. I contacted timekeeping, explaining my situation and was told to estimate the hours I would be working and submit the estimated hours on that week's timesheet. The timekeeper, apparently in a hurry to have all employees' hours relayed to the payroll department, had placed me in an ethical situation. I called my manager and explained the position that I was in, and was instructed not to forward my timesheet until I had completed my project. Had I reported inaccurate work hours in this situation, as instructed by the time reporter, I would have had to deal with my conscience for making an unethical decision. In closing, I would have to say that ethics does play a very important role within a corporation. I have given my own personal examples as well as some general illustrations of different ways that poor ethics can lead to major problems for a company. I also suggested that both large corporations and small business could be negatively affected by the lack of ethics. However, I do feel that a larger corporation has the ability to rebound from poor publicity, due to today's existence of mass media. I believe that a person's morals have much to do with the way that they deal with ethics in business. For example, I work as a computer network engineer and have access to alm
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Approximate Word count = 1114
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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