Question 1 business ethic report Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Question 1 business ethic report - Essay Example Common ethical issues faced by international businesses include personal working conditions, child labor, and corruption among others. These issues create dilemmas to management, hence the need for a business to develop its own strategies to deal with them. Ethical issues and dilemmas may arise in four levels. These include individual or professional level, organizational level, industrial level, and societal and international level. In individual or professional level, a person faces pressure from conflicting interests or in circumstances that call for decision-making. At this level, ethical dilemmas may originate from personal situations or pressure from work. An individual or personal dilemma may spread problems in the organization if not dealt with early enough (Weiss, 2008, p. 98). Organizational level involves the duty of the business to the shareholders and stakeholders. Business will find itself in a dilemma with these two parties if it carries out unethical practices. For ex ample, the case of the American Airlines, where the company had to stop more than 900 flights in 2008 with the f correcting errors found in the wheels of these planes. This situation had put very many people at risk of death or harm (Weiss, 2008, p. 98). In industrial level, the company staff or workforce may be influenced to carry out some functions in the industry. Some of the business practices undertaken by businesses in an industry are unethical or illegal. Individual, professional, organizational, and industrial practices may conflict with those of societal and international levels. For instance, during the payment of cash to the government and offering tips to employees in a certain country may be unacceptable practices, but in certain countries such practices may be illegal and unethical, hence will be considered as bribery (Weiss, 2008, p. 99). Ethical behaviors According to David Smith, there are three types of ethical behaviors. These include universal base code, which re fers to behaviors that are acceptable all over the world. These are codes of conduct that do not change with time and are affected by geographical and culture of people. Super imposed codes change with culture, region and time. Lastly, legal codes or laws, according to David laws are full of limitations as measures of ethics. The current legal framework supports capitalism which has always been considered wrong. At this point, I will share my sentiments with Smith that, an individual’s views on what is ethical or unethical depends on where he or she is located. For example, many countries in the world have zero tolerance on drug trafficking and abuse. A country like Dubai, a drug dealer is likely to be sentenced to hanging while in some countries; some hardcore drugs are still legal. A person may commit an act that to others is immoral and unethical, but the person could still get support some individual especially of the same culture. With this in mind, SIG came up with its own means and plan to help in making ethical decisions. The ethical framework Each company should have a measure of standard to warn against any deviation from ethical practices. An organization should keep in mind laws governing completion in different companies, corruption, policies on human rights and safety of both employees and customers especially in the communist countries. Smith during his lecture suggested that businesses longing to succeed should not consider