The Ethical Mind: A Challenge in Business?

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  1

  devlin_X

  06/01/08 | Report as spam

  Ethics in for-profit business seems an oxymoron

  The best example in electronics retail I have is the gold plated USB cable... Sale associates are pushed to sell them telling customers they are much better over the non-gold plated ones when there is no real world difference besides looks and a huge mark-up.
  
  We no longer sell the customer what they want but what the company wants them to buy.
  
  We as an industry no longer try to hire the most knowledgeable sales staff just the ones who are willing to put their ethics on hold or at least loosen them for 8 hours a day.
  
  Finding an honest and ethical sales person or technician is like finding an honest and ethical mechanic. Once you find them let others know, only deal with them and let them and their management know why you give them your business.

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  sbrennaman354

  06/02/08 | Report as spam

  Sales People

  I agree. I can remeber being told by my father that a particular mechanic was a down right crook selling used parts from a junk yard as new. He publicized this and took heat from it (as did I his son). The mechanic soon left the business. Evne though this was 40 years ago you still see it happening but the crooks are hiding it better.

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  FacilitiesBear

  06/05/08 | Report as spam

  Oh, how correct .....

  I have been and always will be aan ethical individual, I was raised that way by my parents. I do every kind of rebuild/remodel immaginable, from kitchens and baths to Computers to Swimming pools and have always been very straight with people in what I charge and always put in more hours than I charge for .... It's how I maintain happy customers.
  The electronics analogy works well, how many people can actually see a difference between a 15 millisecond response time and a 5 millisecond response time?, yet they push you to the 5 or less because it makes more money for the company.
  How many of us think that Gasoline prices should be as high as they are when the oil companies are claiming 35 billion dollar profits every quarter? Any ethics there?
  Ethics really have nothing to do with business or professionals, they have to do with individuals.

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  lsfranken

  06/02/08 | Report as spam

  RE: The Ethical Mind: A Challenge in Business?

  Ethics and for-profit business is not an oxymoron. Unfortunately many people lose sight of this and think that choices made during the course of conducting business are different than choices they would make at home or want their children to make. As we recognize that ethical decision making is essential to good business, we will start to measure and reward ethical behaviour at work. And in business, what is measured and rewarded is what will be focused on in the future.

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  sbrennaman354

  06/02/08 | Report as spam

  The Ethical Mind: A Challenge in Business?

  I voted again with the majority. You do not have to have a professional code (only three professions have one: Medical, Legal, and professional military officers) to govern your actions. If you think there are gray areas you will soon dwell there and thus begins the slippery slide down the slope... Remeber the "gray area" between good and bad may well equate to Purgatory between Heaven and Hell.

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  campbs43

  06/02/08 | Report as spam

  It's People who do or don't act ethically

  Businesses, like professions, don't exist without the people who work in them. Some people who who work at any level of business lack ethical behaviour. External constraints, like a professional code of ethics or laws, are only as effective as any individual's willingness to adher to them. Codes of conduct also exist in professions like engineering, and industries like pharmaceuticals have self-regulated codes of conduct. But it every individual's choice to either have or not have a personal ethic as a guide to do 'the right thing' in all their actions and decisions.

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  R van Rooi

  06/03/08 | Report as spam

  RE: The Ethical Mind: A Challenge in Business?

  Doing business requires a give and take situation at times. It is not always that clear cut and therefore could result in ethical behaviour becoming challenged.

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  GHD3

  06/03/08 | Report as spam

  Profit=Compromise?

  People do business with people. As soon as you depersonalize decisions "It's just business", you've lost your moral compass and are in the realm of rationalization. I maintain that the ability for mankind to rationalize and justify his actions is infinite and therefore without an objective moral compass one's decisions fall into 'situational' ethics.
  Having said that, is it harder to be ethical in business? As a businessman, I've always maintained it was not just harder but impossible for a lawyer have an ethical mind. My experience shows they are just more articulate in their rational and justification thought process. But I digress, yes it is difficult however it is principly no different than anything that falls under the classification of 'work'. Every role has it's opportunities for moral gray and immoral ethics and every person must choose every day (many times a day)which moral path/decision they will make.
  
  I submit that Mr. Harvard is starting from a supposition that Profit=Compromise and therefore ends with his 'logical' conclusion.