ETHICS AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
OF ENTREPRENEUR
A. The entrepreneur must establish a balance between
ethical exigencies, economic expediency, and social responsibility.
1. A manager’s attitudes
concerning corporate responsibility tend to be supportive of laws and professional
codes of ethics.
2. Entrepreneurs have few
reference persons, role models, and developed internal ethics codes.
3. Entrepreneurs are particularly
sensitive to peer pressure and social norms in the community as well as
pressures from their competitors.
4. Internationally, U.S. managers
have more individualistic and less communitarian values than managers in
European countries.
B. While ethics refers to the “study of whatever is
right and good for humans,” business ethics concerns itself with the
investigation of business practices in light of human values.
1. “Business ethics” has emerged
as an important topic.
2. The word “ethics” stems from
the Greek êthos, meaning custom and usage.
C. Development of Our Ethical Concepts.
1. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle
provide the earliest writings dealing with ethical conceptions; earlier
writings involving moral codes can be found in both Judaism and Hinduism.
2. American attitudes on ethics
result from three principle influences:
a.
Judeo-Christian heritage.
b. Belief in
individualism.
c.
Opportunities based on ability rather than social status.
3. Research on business ethics
can be broken down into four broad classifications:
a. Pedagogically-oriented
inquiry.
b. Theory-building without
empirical testing.
c. Empirical research, measuring
the attitudes and ethical beliefs of students and academic faculty.
d. Empirical research within
business environments.
Isaac Kamkai
ReplyDelete