Business Ethics

Business ethics - A subject taught in a few of the B schools hoping that the new age managers would develop into ethical human beings and introduce or be a part of the change to bring business to the levels of a respectable profession. 

But aren't they forgetting that the goal of a business is to make profit. And ethics is not something that is well defined but is just the views of a person or the society as such, which are not absolute. Therefore the introduction of such a highly confusing aspect in which one cannot really separate the right from the wrong seems meaningless. Although one thing that it does is open one's mind to the various possibilities to consider for one's actions.

Here i present a few of the contradictions:

1. Whom does a firm care about the most in terms of its stakeholders?

2. Do u outsource to a country with cheap labour or is it exploitation of labour as the wages are a lot less than in your own country? what are your obligations for your own employees whom u fire?

3. Does privacy matter or company security?

4. What is CSR? How do u account for it in the balance sheets? 

And more importantly if CSR benefits the company too why is it lauded by the govt. when all that the company is doing is increasing its profits.

These and many more dilemmas exist but how do you choose? In absence of clear laws governing the country (laws are unfortunately more ambiguous coz loopholes always exist) how does one exactly decide what to do??? No clear answer exists and it is more of a damage control exercise.......