Business Ethics

Since a corporation is legally defined as a person, it makes some sense to ask what kind of person a corporation might be. Business corporation organizational model is legally a person; it has become a dominant economic, political and social force around the globe. Individuals within an organization can hold and practice core values. The business of business is to generate profits to cover the cost of capital and to develop innovation, and it is said to be ethical when the corporation doesn’t do anything to harm others but the Corporation is today’s dominant institution, creating great wealth but also great harm. HR plays a vital role in building an ethical based organization. To build an ethical organization, its leadership must establish, publish, and model the company’s core values. Being ethical should start from the Top Management down to the employees.

Anonymous author states that corporations have, “no soul to redeem, no body to incarcerate.” This refers to the fact that they have all the legal rights of an individual, but they cannot be punished or held liable for their actions in the same way. It goes on to give psychoanalysis of corporations and determines that they are, by and large, psychotic. The point is not that individual companies pollute the environment, hurt animals, exploit workers and commit accounting fraud, but that such outrages are a result of the essential personality traits of the corporate life form. These behaviors are symptoms arising from a list of pathologies that includes disregard for the well-being of others, inability to form lasting relationships and deceitfulness.

According to J. Brooke Hamilton III, Ph.D.:

“Ethical judgments are made about actions or situations that are right or wrong, good or    bad. One clue that an action or situation needs an ethical rather than simply a business judgment is that the action or situation involves actual or potential harm to someone or something. Another clue would be that there seems to be a possibility of a violation of what we generally consider right or good.”

In order to do no harm to others and practice business ethics, HR plays a vital role in building an ethical based organization. Gillian Flynn wrote on her article on Make Your Ethics Your Business that “It’s up to HR to train, educate and communicate with employees on rights and wrongs in the workplace. After all, ethics is one topic that begins and ends with people”. Roxane Kerr added, “I don’t know how you’d separate standards of behavior from HR. I don’t even know how you’d separate a discussion on ethics from the standards you hold people to. HR and ethics have to be linked. They have to be integrated.” Therefore HR must make the first step to achieve an ethical-based organization.

 

The purpose of a business is to generate profit. It is said to be ethical when it doesn’t do anything to harm others. In order to do so, Human Resource should train educate and communicate to employees on rights and wrongs in the workplace because ignorance on the code of ethics or on how to act accordingly/ethically within the organization is the root cause of how an employee commits an unethical issue.

How Human Resource can help build an ethical-based organization

Individuals within an organization can hold and practice core values; however, that doesn’t mean that the organization as a whole is ethical. To build an ethical organization, its leadership must establish, publish, and model the company’s core values. While each organization should establish its own ethical framework, two cornerstones must be in place in order to build an ethical organization: mutual trust and respect. Human Resource plays an important role in developing and supporting a culture that not only strives to rise above compliance with the law or engage in socially acceptable practices, but that will integrate ethical practices into the fabric of an organization.

HR must spell out for employees that ethics come before deadlines or bottom lines. It’s a message that can be overlooked in the work rush: In a landmark study of more than 4,000 employees conducted by the Washington, D.C.-based Ethics Resource Center, nearly one-third of respondents said they felt they’d been pressured to violate company policies in order to achieve business objectives. Half of them said they were put under such pressure periodically. It’s good to dispel even the impression among employees that management encourages unethical behavior in obtaining business objectives.

HR plays a vital role in building an ethical based organization. It’s up to HR to train, educate and communicate with employees on rights and wrongs in the workplace. After all, ethics is one topic that begins and ends with people. Roxane Kerr says, “I don’t know how you’d separate standards of behavior from HR, I don’t even know how you’d separate a discussion on ethics from the standards you hold people to. HR and ethics have to be linked. They have to be integrated.” Bernard Fried added that through his experience as an ethics officer claimed that ignorance is the main reason why an employee commits unethical issues even if he/she does not mean to. The HR department can make important contributions to this because the issue of ethics revolves around people.

HR must take on responsibility for training, education and communication. Although a usable ethics code and an accessible ethics office help get the message out, a truly successful effort requires active communication, education and training. Some employees simply aren’t going to go out of the way to reflect on their decisions or to ensure they’re acting within the ethics code. Yet these are often the employees who need education the most.

Human Resource must take the first step on building an ethical-based organization. Employees’ Ignorance said to be the main reason why an employee commits unethical issues even if he/she does not mean to. Therefore HR must take on responsibility for training, education and communication. Employees being knowledgeable on the code of ethics will help the organization establish a good name, reputation and be profitable.

The Truth Can Be –And Usually Is– Ugly

Since a corporation is legally defined as a person, it makes some sense to ask what kind of person a corporation might be. Modern Corporations are driven by the motive to generate profits for shareholders, regardless of how this affects the interests of workers, society, or the environment. Corporate personhood has essentially led to corporations having an insane amount of control over what we see, eat, drink, breathe and consume in general. The corporation, in fact, is so driven by self-interest and financial greed that it fits the personality profile of a psychopathic individual. Corporations have become part of our consciousness at an unshakable level. The corporation’s unbridled self interest victimizes individuals, the environment, and even shareholders, and can cause corporations to self-destruct.

Business corporation organizational model is legally a person; it has become a dominant economic, political and social force around the globe. According to Naom Chomsky, corporations have endowed their creature with the rights of persons and by now, rights far exceeding persons of flesh and blood but a person that is pathological by nature and by law, and systematically crushes democracy, freedom, rights, and the natural human instincts on which a decent life and even human survival depends: the modern corporation.  This type of “person” typically acts like a dangerously destructive psychopath without conscience. Individual slave owners may be kind people, but in their institutional role they are monsters.

Anonymous author states that corporations have, “no soul to redeem, no body to incarcerate.” This refers to the fact that they have all the legal rights of an individual, but they cannot be punished or held liable for their actions in the same way. It goes on to give psychoanalysis of corporations and determines that they are, by and large, psychotic. The point is not that individual companies pollute the environment, hurt animals, exploit workers and commit accounting fraud, but that such outrages are a result of the essential personality traits of the corporate life form. These behaviors are symptoms arising from a list of pathologies that includes disregard for the well-being of others, inability to form lasting relationships and deceitfulness.

According to The Corporation, despite its flawed character, governments have freed the corporation from legal constraints through deregulation, and granted it ever greater power over society through privatization. Corporations are required by law to elevate their own interests above those of others, making them prone to prey upon and exploit others without regard for legal rules or moral limits. Governments have become powerless compared to what they were before. Around things too precious, vulnerable, sacred or important to the public interest, governments have, in the past, drawn protective boundaries against corporate exploitation. Today, governments are inviting corporations into domains from which they were previously barred.

Corporation emerged as a legal “person”, imbued with a “personality” of pure self-interest. The Corporation exists to create wealth, and even world disasters can be profit centers. The operational principles of the corporation give it a highly anti-social “personality”: it is self-interested, inherently amoral, callous and deceitful; it breaches social and legal standards to get its way; it does not suffer from guilt, yet it can mimic the human qualities of empathy, caring and altruism. One of the most basic of these is raised by the conceit of treating the corporation as a mental patient: is there a cure? A restoration of the corporation’s original purpose, to serve the public interest, and calls for re-establishment of democratic control over the institution should be advocated. Concrete, pragmatic, and realistic reforms are proposed. The clarion call for change is here for all who would listen.

 

Depth of Man

Character is not reflected by what we say, or even by what we intend, it is a reflection of what we do. Our deeds determines us, as much as we determine our deeds. Character is the inward motivation to do the right thing regardless of the circumstances and the cause. It also deals with how people think and behave related to issues such as right and wrong, justice and equity, and other areas of human conduct. The best measure of character is who you are and what you do when no one is looking. This character defines, builds or break your reputation.

In general, we may say that character is the expression of the personality of a human being, and that it reveals itself in his conduct. In this sense every man has a character. At the same time only human beings, not animals, have character: it implies rationality. Man was given the free will to choose between good and evil. He can choose to act freely in accordance with such knowledge. Man having free will makes rationality possible. If there is no free will, then no one is capable of choosing to believe something because of good reasons. Man as a rational being enables him to determine what is right from what is wrong which provides learning that build character.

Everything that is wrong in the world has been produced by the perversion and the misuse of the good. Therefore, to eliminate wrong, man must learn to make the proper use of those things that exist in his sphere of action.  According to Christian Larson, the misuse of things comes either from ignorance or lack of character, or both. It is the power of character that directs everything that is done in the human system or by the human system. It is character that gives human life its tone, its color and its quality, and it is character that determines whether our talents and faculties are to be their best or not. The man who has a well-developed character is not simply good. He is good for something, because he has the power to turn all his energies to good account.

According to George Bernard Shaw, A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. As long as the world is turning and spinning, we’re gonna be dizzy and we’re gonna make mistakes. Man makes mistakes and such occurrence gives man an experience and a better understanding of life. As the saying goes experience is the best teacher. This mistake molds the self re-owned character of individual. According to the character ethic, it is most important to focus on integrating the principles of effective living into one’s character. This may be a long-term process, but working on the character, including an effective view of the world, is getting at the root from which behavior flows and so is fundamental. Better decision-making is an inside and an outside job. Character refers to what’s inside – within our private thoughts, experiences, and dreams.

Character is putting ethics into action. It is the consistency between what you say you will do and what you actually do. Character is doing the right thing when nobody’s looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that’s right is to get by, and the only thing that’s wrong is to get caught. The true test of character is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we don’t know what to do. You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him. The wonderful thing about character is that it is one of the few things in life that no one will ever be able to forcefully take away from anyone. Your choices are your own. Even if someone can take your life, they can’t force you to make a choice that you believe is wrong.

Man by nature is good but the presence of man’s free will makes him evil

Ever since the beginning of time, our reality had been based on the conflict of what is good and evil. Man despite of being naturally good prone to evil. Humanity is presented in the bible as something created in the image of God. Man has the life force as do other living things, but man also has a component that sets us apart from every other things. This component allows man to be creative, and to be able to express that creativity in art, music, and etc. This is what enables man to encounter evil. Evil results from our capacity to choose to reject good. Man was given the free will to choose between good and evil. And therefore he has the unique ability to know what is right and what is wrong. He can choose to act freely in accordance with such knowledge. He, alone in the world, owns the faculty of choosing to conform or not to conform to God’s will. He is free to be good or evil, to resemble mud or to resemble God.

It is simply man’s capacity to make choices that affect other humans. Deciding whether to pull the trigger of a gun pointed at someone involves good and evil. Evil involves making choices, and mankind has uniquely been given the capacity to make choices. When our 1st parents Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit, uniqueness was activated which enabled us to make choices. According to Genesis 2:9, the fruit was not an apple, it was “the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” When they decided to eat the fruit, man gave in to temptation which initiated knowledge on evilness. Man is always eager for new challenges and experiences which at times cause wrong decisions. Like what happened to Adam and Eve, their curiosity resulted to the First Original Sin of Man.

According to St. Augustine, man was inherently and totally good until the fall. After the fall, man was both good and evil. A dualistic thought, but nonetheless a very Christian statement because we now had the ability to sin. From that point on, man was not prone to evil, but was born with evil in him. Man’s freedom is the cause of evil. This is what drives man to sin in the first place. Evil is a negative thing. Man has free will and has the ability to be good or bad, humanist or tyrannical.

God created man a rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions. “God willed that man should be ‘left in the hand of his own counsel,’ so that he might of his own accord seek his Creator and freely attain his full and blessed perfection by cleaving to him.” (The Dignity of the Human Person, Article 3 Man’s Freedom 1730) As Ernest Hemingway wrote, “So far, about morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.” It says that morality is determined by individual’s own choice and preferences. It says that “What is right for me is right, and what is right for you is right.” Man is rational and therefore like God; he is created with free will and is master over his acts.

In conclusion, evil is man’s perversion of God’s great gift of free will. Free will is the gift God given to man to choose between good and evil. As long as dissatisfaction, greed, envy and lust are present, evil will not be barred. Let me end this discussion with a quote from St. Thomas Aquinas, “Man by nature is good but the presence of Man’s free will makes him bad.” Though man is intellectually capable, temptation had been and will always be present.