Business ethics are the moral principles guiding a business’s behavior. These same principles apply to an individual’s conduct in a business. If an action is considered ethically right or wrong, then it provides the right choice. Identifying an unethical business practice has been fairly easy. There is a great concern in corporate social responsibility. More ethicists emphasize that there is always a right thing to be done based on the moral principle. Nevertheless there is a group of individuals whom tend to believe that the right thing to do relatively depends on the situation one is.
What is morality? What is considered morally right or wrong in behavioral business ethics? These are the main questions in mind. Morality is defined as a behavior regarding the standards of behavior; it can either be right or wrong. The concepts involved with morality can be sub-dived into three categories for a better understanding:
- Standards in morality, this is in connection with behavior
- Responsibility in reference to morality, is in connection with our conscience
- Identity is the ability to do a wrong or right act
In the current modern diversified society, morality is a complicated issue. Morality is considered more significant, moral actions are normally regarded as praise and merit rewards, whereas immoral actions are regarded as blame and merit punishment.
If I were among the MBA applicants who stumbled across the opportunity to learn the results early, what would I have done? Our society requires people to do what is morally preferable. It is morally preferable to offer handouts to charities. It is morally preferable to refrain from hurting other people. In simple words, we morally have to do these things. Hacking into an organization system is considered unethical and morally wrong.
Something is morally right if it is morally acceptable. The same as it is morally wrong when it is morally unacceptable. This means one is not allowed to hack into the school system and see the results before they are released by the school itself, therefore it is wrong.
The “good” and the “bad” refer to the positive and negative values of a person’s action. An action is considered morally to be good if its outcome helps people attain positive value, or positive merit is key. An action is also morally bad when it helps attain a negative value, therefore it warrants avoidance. According to a statement made by Dean Clark, “Harvard Business School’s main objective is to educate principled leaders who would make a difference to the world. To achieve that, an individual had to have the skills and qualities, as well as the highest standards of integrity, sound judgment, and a strong moral compass. This includes an intuitive sense of what is wrong and what is right.” That kind of statement strongly condemns hacking into the website. As a student applicant waiting for the results, I would have patiently waited for the school to release them. I would have disregarded the anonymous hacker’s temptation to log in and see if I had passed the test.
It is sometimes hard to pinpoint what morality is all about, but then again we frequently discuss morality with ease. There are many ideas in relation to morality. Involving what we ought to do, wrong or right, and justice; these ideas usually have a nonmoral counterpart. It is illegal to hack into a website. Nevertheless people tend to confuse morality between etiquette and law, in as much as they are not identical. Something that is legal is more often legal, but not at all times, whereas what is considered illegal can be moral.
Works Cited
Shaw, William H. Moral Issues in Business, 13th Edition. Cengage Learning, 2016. [Bookshelf Online].
Schwartz, Mark S. Business Ethics: An Ethical Decision-Making Approach. , 2017. Print.
