Ethics in the world of Business

Class 2 : Ethics in the world of Business

• Summary

First of all, we began to speak about what ethics means for us. All the class has participated and we found several elements that make us thing about ethics. For some of us Ethics is something very similar with behaviour to a situation enrolled in a culture. Actually, Ethics can be related with morals, right thing to do and the values of individuals (it can be because of our own values, our cultures…) We saw that the moral is one of the elements mainly repeated because of the following questions: what is the moral line between right or wrong? Is moral above law?

Then we spoke about the influences of ethics in our principles and what we stand by. By the way we linked ethics and moral with the influences decisions making. Moreover, we said that the world is surrounded by Ethics and we focus on the Ethics on Business. According to us, Business goal is to make profits. Even in a company Business ethics is very important because sometimes people act in unethical ways. Unfortunately, the law can’t regulate all the aspects of business and is very slow to up-to-date with the new areas of concern. Because not everything that is legal is moral and not everything that is immoral is illegal, the ethics is very important as law cannot regulate everything such as we said above. For example in class we had an example about something that is ethical somewhere but illegal in another country: the practise of different religions in Saudi Arabia is illegal even if in other countries it is 100% legal and ethical to follow it own religion and culture. We also spoke about the second chance that ex-prisoners have when then quit prison, the chance of professional re-insertion. We spoke about the example of a man who was an ex-con and who did before unethical and illegal things (such as drug rings and the fact that he helped to burn a murder victim’s butchered body). Now he is coaching children at school. In a way, we said that it can be perceived like a second chance for him to be another person but in another way it had been perceived like “why this dangerous individual is coaching children?”. Then, we spoke about why people act in unethical ways and we studied some reasons like the lack of strong guidance and conflicting signals, the rationalizations, biases and heuristics. In a business we said that the manager has 3 roles to play to well guide it team such as be an economic actor, a company leader and a community leader.

• Own reflection

Nowadays we live in the world where business is around the world and all the countries deal with other countries and they faced different culture, behaviour and ethics. Actually, business ethics has an impact on how good a business performs in the long term. No matter the size, the power or the industry of a company, business ethics is one of the most important tools of a success of a company. In my opinion, business ethics improve the productivity of employees for make better decisions and overall employee morale. When employees are working in an atmosphere of honesty and integrity, the entire organization benefits. The importance of business ethics is something relevant to increase employee royalty and morale and strength the whole team. Moreover, business ethics influences (as we said before) on the employees. When employees are satisfied at work, people don’t notice it so much but when it is the contrary, the notoriety of the company can be directly affected. Indeed to attract investors, new human resources and to keep it current stakeholders the company has to maintain a positive image through respecting the environment and the market she is competing in. A major example that come to my mind and can justify the unethical way that a company can act is the price of medication in the pharmaceutical industry. Some scandals had erupted recently because of the expensive prices of treatments to fight the hepatitis C and cancers. The Glivec, a treatment against leukemia is today sold 40 000 per year per patient for an estimated cost production of only 200 euros. This can prove how a company is able to act in a unethical way to increase profit no matter what are the consequences.

Class 4: Whistle Blowing

• Summary

First of all, the debate about “sharing an economy: a boon” took place in the class. The debate was very rich of arguments for and against the sharing economy. The main relevant that I keep in mind to be for it was the fact that sharing an economy can improve and increase life expectancy and purchasing power of customers. The main relevant arguments that I keep in mind was the fact that lot of companies run out of business like the example of taxis because of the development of Uber on the transportation

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