INTRODUCITION TO BUSINESS ETHICSWhat is meant by ethics? - Consists of moral principles governing the right and wrongs of human conduct - Is about the principles of right and wrong accepted by individuals or social groups - A code of behaviour considered morally correct - Code of moral principles that guide the action of people and groups - Ethical behaviour is doing what is morally right Business ethics Business ethics are the principles and standards that: - Define acceptable conduct in business - Should underpin decision making An alternative definition is: ”the moral values which govern business behaviour and restrains companies from pursuing the interest of the shareholder at the expense of all other considerations” - Some activities might be profitable and legal but nevertheless are considered to be unethical - An ethical decision is one that is both legal and meets the shared ethical standards of the community Is ethics the same as the law? - No - although the law should reflect the ethical views of society there are certain activities permitted by law which some individual or groups in society or individual might regard as unethical. - Ethical considerations are about what is right and what is wrong - The law is about what is lawful and what is unlawful The following business activities are legal but might pose ethical dilemmas for individuals: • • • • Profiting from gambling Selling goods manufactured by low wage in developing countries Engaging in the fur trade Experimenting on animals Is it the same as corporate social responsibility? - There is clearly an overlap between CSR and business ethics - A socially responsible firm should be an ethical firm - An ethical firm should be socially responsible However there is a distinction: - CSR is about responsibility to all stakeholders and not just shareholders - Ethics is about morally correct behaviour Ethics - decision models - When faced with an ethical question, what guides our decision making? There are different ways of looking at the issue: Moral principles - Evaluate decisions on whether it is consistent with accepted moral principles Utilitarianism - Looks at decisions from the perspective of who gains - What is good for the greatest number is right - The test is whether or not it is consistent with the greatest happiness of the greatest number? fair treatment.Justice model .An ethically correct decision is one that best maintains the human rights of those affected .People have fundamental human rights and liberties .Is it in the individual’s best interest? . privacy.Decisions that violate human rights are unethical Individualism .It would be naïve to believe that all business organisations behave in an ethical.The test is does it distribute benefits and penalties in a fair and equitable way? Human rights .This is the ethics of self interest Spectrum of firms .Wants to do the right thing .Seeks to win at all costs . conscience.Ethical behaviour is enlightened self interest The ethically engaged firm .Will obey the law but no more than that The responsive firm .We can classify firms in terms of their ethical stance in the following ways: The amoral firm .The test is: does it violate human rights? .Accepts that being ethical can pay off . safety . life.consent. free speech.Anything is acceptable The legalistic firm . moral way . But ethical behaviour is not fully integrated into the culture The ethical firm .Ethics are a core value and permeate the whole organisation .Has a code of ethics .. DEFINITION OF BUSINESS ETHICS Business ethics can be defined as written and unwritten codes of principles and values that govern decisions and actions within a company. . as well as the organization as a whole. the organization’s culture sets standards for determining the difference between good and bad decision making and behavior. The phrase 'business ethics' can be used to describe the actions of individuals within an organization. a definition for business ethics boils down to knowing the difference between right and wrong and choosing to do what is right. In the most basic terms. In the business world. Types of business ethics The different forms of business ethics can be categorized into the following types: General business ethics These ethics deal with the following issues: • • • • • • • Corporate social responsibility (CSR) Fiduciary responsibility Corporate governance Industrial espionage Hostile take-overs Corporate manslaughter Political contributions Professional business ethics The professional business ethics can be categorized into the following types: Ethics of human resource management (HRM) • • • • • • • • Discrimination issues Strike breaking or union busting Drug testing Workplace surveillance Whistle-blowing Occupational safety and health Employment law Indentured servitude . Ethics of accounting information • • • • • • • • • • • Kickbacks Creative accounting Earnings management Misleading financial analysis Insider trading Securities fraud Bucket shop Forex scams Executive compensation Bribery Facilitation payments Ethics of production • • • • • • • • Harmful. price fixing. or defective products Environmental ethics Pollution Carbon emissions trading Health Mobile phone radiation Genetically modified food Product testing ethics like animal testing and animal rights Ethics of sales and marketing • • Pricing: Price discrimination. price skimming Anticompetitive practices . addictive. sex in advertisements. copyright misuse. spam (computer). and knowledge • • • • • • Patent infringement. pyramid scheme. viral marketing. skills.• Particular marketing strategies: Greenwash. copyright infringement Patent misuse. trademark infringement. and subliminal messages Marketing in schools Grey markets and black markets • • • Ethics of intellectual property. patent troll. bait and switch. shill. submarine patent Employee raiding Biopiracy and bioprospecting Industrial espionage Business intelligence International business ethics • • • • • Transfer pricing Fair trade pricing Cultural imperialism Globalization Child labor . and planned obsolescence Advertisement contents: Attack ads or promos. we should . after all. but the same is true.Objective of bussness ethics Why Study Ethics? Even granting that business ethics is important. considering that some of the most famous intellectuals in world history have given it a central place in their thought (Confucius. The idea that ethics has no intellectual content is odd indeed. Maimonides. etc. and even business law lend themselves to intellectual treatment. Aristotle. Ethics is in fact a highly developed field that demands close reasoning. marketing. Ethics is something you feel. No one theory explains everything satisfactorily. but ethics does not. teleological and consequentialist theories of right and wrong. operations. Plato. not during a professor’s lecture. many seem to believe that there is no point in studying the subject. in the natural sciences. The Western tradition in particular has given rise to sophisticated deontological. Thomas Aquinas. people often say that studying the field will not change behavior. If the suggestion here is that college-level study does not change behavior.). Even when they grant that ethics has intellectual content. Character is formed in early childhood. not something you think. Finance. They give one an opportunity to think through. Why cannot ethics courses also have an effect? 7 Ethics courses have a number of features that seem likely to influence behavior. not only the ethics course. It may also improve business conduct in general. and cross-cultural management. They give one practice at articulating an ethical position. Their emphasis on case studies helps to make one aware of the potential consequences of one’s actions. Presumably the claim. at one’s leisure. since ethics is the one field that deals explicitly with conduct. intellectual property. environmental protection. They teach one to make distinctions and avoid fallacies that are so common when people make decisions. but it is useful to those who want to be good. They provide a language and conceptual framework with which one can talk and think about ethical issues. employment. How many of the recent business scandals would . then. is that studying finance and marketing can influence one’s conduct. when there is no time to think. They present ethical that theories help define what a valid ethical argument looks like. None of this convinces one to be good. This is again a curious view.shut down the entire business school. They introduce one to such specialized areas as product liability. which can help resist pressure to compromise. Where is the evidence for this view? The early origins of character do not prevent finance and marketing courses from influencing behavior. but studying ethics cannot. complex ethical issues that are likely to arise later. So what is the difference between the two? Management is concerned with how decisions affect the company. but the two fields are closely related. Business management is all about making the right decisions. Management is therefore part of ethics. Ethics is all about making the right decisions. vocabulary and conceptual equipment to raise an ethical issue with their coworkers? Ethics not only should be studied alongside management. Business ethics is management carried out in the real world. Management operates in the specialized context of the firm.have occurred if subordinates had possessed the skills. while ethics is concerned about how decisions affect everything. while ethics operates in the general context of the world. . A business manager cannot make the right decisions without understanding management in particular as well as ethics in general. This practice was mostly ad hoc and unorganised varying from industry to industry and company to company. During the 1960s. corporations . ethical and finally philanthropic.most notably in the US .LITERATURE REVIEW Business ethics has only existed as an academic field since the 1970s.) 3) Business ethics fused personal and social responsibility together and gave it a theoretical foundation. Business ethics also recognised that the world of business raised new and unprecedented moral problems not covered by personal systems of morality. business ethics had a somewhat broader remit than its predecessor (the social issues course) and was a good deal more systematic and constructive. In this way. cheating customers and tax fraud.economic (on the bottom level). (This also made business ethicists unpopular in certain circles. corporations found themselves increasingly under attack over unethical conduct. It could not provide all the necessary tools for . Business schools in large universities began to incorporate ‘social responsibility’ courses into their syllabi around this time but it was mostly focused on the law and management strategy. As a response to this. Ethical issues were dealt with in social issues courses however. then legal. and were not considered in their own right until the 1970s when philosophers began to write on the subject of business ethics 1) Business ethics provided an ethical framework for evaluating business and the corporate world. Social responsibility has been described as being a pyramid with four types of responsibility involved . 2) It allowed critical analysis of business and development of new and different methods. Commonsense morality is sufficient to govern judgments about stealing from your employer.developed social responsibility programmes which usually involved charitable donations and funding local community projects. and under a new set of federal sentencing guidelines that became law just a year later. To Pickens: First. however.” who argued that the corporate responsibility was simply to return a profit. To Burke: Last. Ethikos discussed many of the ramifications of a continuing discussion about whether or not proper ethical conduct could improve company profitability. It followed up with part of a transcript of a debate between T. The purpose was to demonstrate the value of raising ethical levels throughout the corporate structure—from the executive suite to the mid-management sector and the work floor as well. the right to strike and whistleblowing. Ethikos was not trying to tell its readers to establish some kind of defensive system to protect their cash position. In doing so it set forth the views of Milton Friedman in the “Self-Interest Model of Business Ethics. In earlier times. the fines could have amounted to between $30 million and $50 million. Boone Pickens and James Burke of Johnson & Johnson about where the company shareholders ranked in importance. In publishing this reportage. There was coverage of the hotline set up by the National Association of Accountants—to offer guidance to its 100. the climate was changing. Another makes a business trip and takes friends along at company expense. . There queries were and still are familiar: A business owner modernizes his personal residence and orders his accountant to put the cost on the company’s books. A positive sign back then noted that companies were reporting huge writeoffs that in earlier times firms had once tried to hide.5 million. An oil spill that found its way into the Monongahela River cost Ashland Oil $2.000 members who work within businesses as controllers or budget officers. By 1990.evaluating moral justification of affirmative action. Still. for centuries. the acceptance of gifts and favors and the giving as well. the injunctions to truthfulness and honesty or the prohibition against theft and envy are directly applicable. Other traditions and religions have comparable sacred or ancient texts that have guided people's actions in all realms. a former chairman of the SEC to support a program on ethics at Harvard Business School. a guide that is still used by many today. A notion of stewardship can be found in the Bible as well as many other notions that can be and have been applied to business. Perhaps the example from the Bible that comes to mind most readily is the Ten Commandments. property. and he makes moral judgments about greed. and Aristotle explicitly discusses economic relations.There were interviews with prominent executives commenting on their personal experiences with the problems of facilitating payments. His discussion of trade. In particular. Ethikos sought opinions from a number of teachers in graduate schools of business throughout the country. Having donated most of the money. In its very first issue. or the unnatural use of one's . Among them: “I’ve been very disturbed recently with the large numbers of graduates of leading business schools who have become convicted felons. he gave his reasons. commerce and trade under the heading of the household in his Politics. Plato is known for his discussions of justice in the Republic. Ethikos aims to present them with clarity and timeliness. This came in the wake of a $30 million gift from John Shad. including business. exchange. familiarity with the complexities of the past does help to focus on the problems and concerns of the future. DuPont pegged the limit of both at $25. money and wealth have an almost modern ring. acquisition. If we move from religion to philosophy we have a similar long tradition. and still do.” Ethikos makes no claim to prescience. In this broad sense ethics in business is simply the application of everyday moral or ethical norms to business. Hegel all wrote on economic matters and just distribution."2 In the West. and trading equals for equals or "having an equal amount both before and after the transaction. and. In the process. Smith develops Locke's notion of labor into a labor theory of value. for instance. there is no systematic discussion of business except in the context of justice and honesty in buying and selling. Calvin. F. G. and similarly condemns usury because it involves a profit from currency itself rather than from the process of exchange in which money is simply a means.1 He also gives the classic definition of justice as giving each his due. among other Reformation figures also discussed trade and business and led the way in the development of the Protestant work ethic. however. Tawney's Religion and the Rise of Capitalism6 argues persuasively that religion was an essential part in the rise of individualism and of commerce as it developed in the modern period. one acquires property by mixing his labor with what he finds in nature. after the fall of Rome.4 Nonetheless he justified borrowing for a good end from someone ready to lend at interest. in Thomas Aquinas's discussion of selling articles for more than they are worth and selling them at a higher price than was paid for them 3 and in his discussion of.7 Adam Smith is often thought of as the father of modern economics with his An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations . 5 R. Immanuel Kant. For him the two realms were not separate. sought the divorce of the religious from the secular and politics from religion. The modern period. treating equals equally.capacities in pursuit of wealth for its own sake. John Stuart Mill. and John Wesley. and put great emphasis on his notion of the invisible hand. Yet the commentators often forget that Smith was also a moral philosopher and the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments. ownership and property. H. . John Locke developed the classic defense of property as a natural right. his condemnation of usury. Luther. For him. and although there were various discussions of poverty and wealth. Christianity held sway. economics and economic activity were similarly divorced from religion and joined with politics to form what was known as political-economy. In modern times commentators have interpreted him as a defender of laissez-faire economics. following Aristotle's analysis. We see this. W. The only commodity not sold at its real value. Workers are paid less than the value they produce. according to Marx. stands out as the most trenchant critic of capitalism as it had developed up through the Nineteenth Century. Pope Leo XIII in 1891 issued the first of the papal encyclicals on social justice. is human labor. but it has been taken as a moral condemnation since 'exploitation' is a morally charged term and for him seems clearly to involve a charge of injustice. there would be no profit and so capitalism would disappear. and the Marxists sought the hearts and minds of the workers. Marx claimed that capitalism was built on the exploitation of labor. The result would be a society (and eventually a world) without exploitation and also without the alienation that workers experience in capitalist societies. Marx's notion of exploitation was developed by Lenin in Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. according to which all economic value comes from human labor. in which all property is socially (as opposed to privately) owned.Karl Marx. however. saw the world as divided between those who follow Marx and those who follow religion. which improved the situation of the workingman. in which he claims that the exploitation of workers in the developed countries has been lessened and the workers' conditions have improved because the worst exploitation has been exported to the colonies. and in which all members of society would contribute according to their ability and receive according to their needs. Whether this was for him a factual claim or a moral condemnation is open to debate. even when not attributed to Marx. Refusing to yield the moral high ground. If workers were paid the value they produced. and Marx's critique in one form or another continues up to today. The difference between the value the workers produce and what they are paid is the source of profit for the employer or the owner of the means of production. In its place would be socialism and eventually communism. Marx's claim is based on his analysis of the labor theory of value. Frederich Engels. Marx appealed to the workers of his time and helped start the labor movement. His criticism has been adapted by many contemporary critics who claim that multinational corporations derive their profits from the exploitation of workers in less developed countries. . Marx's collaborator. Pope Pius XI in 1931 wrote Quadragesimo Anno. Hence although the popes were critical of existing economic structures. Perhaps the most influential protestant figure in this regard was Reinhold Niebuhr whose trenchant critique of capitalism in Moral Man and Immoral Society 9 became the basis for courses in seminaries and schools of theology. S." his wife and his children. the emphasis in the pulpits was still primarily on individuals living up to the demands of morality. a theme continued by Pope John Paul II in Laborem Exercens (1981) and Centesimus Annus (1991). while seeking the answer to exploitation in the notion of a just wage.S. which was one sufficient "to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner. The aim of the encyclicals was not to propose any particular economic system but to insist that any system should not be contrary to Christian moral principles and should improve the conditions of the masses of humanity. even though there is no central authority to issue documents such as the encyclicals. As opposed to Marx. Included with this notion. although more open to the U. The U. hunger. The idea of ethics in business continues until the present day. 8 Later popes followed Leo's example. including the giving of charity to those in need. in the United States this focuses on the moral or ethical actions of individuals. it justified private property. especially of the poor and the least advantaged. In 1993 the Parliament of the World's Religions adopted a Declaration of a Global Ethic 10 that condemned "the abuses of the Earth's ecosystems. free enterprise system.Rerum Novarum. Many business persons are strongly influenced by their religious beliefs and the ethical norms that they have been taught as part of their religion. It is in this sense also that many people. is also the criticism of multinational corporations that use child labor or pay pitifully low wages to employees in less developed countries or who utilize suppliers that run sweat shops. Catholic Bishops in 1984 issued a Pastoral Letter on the U. which morally attacked both Soviet socialism and laissez-faire capitalism. in discussing business ethics. and apply these norms in their ." poverty. Economy along the same lines. immediately raise examples of immoral or unethical activity by individuals. The same is true of the Protestant tradition as of the Catholic. S. however. In general. and the economic disparities that threaten many families with ruin. and so on. The 1960s marked a changing attitude towards society in the United States and towards business. and in its wake came environmental damage on a scale that had not previously been possible. Business Ethics as an Academic Field Business ethics as an academic field. He has stated often and publicly that he just did what his Jewish faith told him was the right thing to do. The Second World War was over. . just as business ethics as a corporate movement. What they mean is the need for ethics in business. American-based multinational corporations were growing in size and importance. Big business was coming into its own. have a more recent history. replacing small and medium-sized businesses in the societal image of business. and to criticism of multinational corporations. The United States was becoming more and more of a dominant economic force. Aaron Feuerstein is a prime example of someone whose actions after fire destroyed almost all of his Malden Mills factory complex kept his workers on the payroll until he could rebuild. The spirit of protest led to the environmental movement. which came in for increasing scrutiny and criticism. to the rise of consumerism. The chemical industry was booming with innovation. This strand of the story is perhaps the most prominent in the thinking of the ordinary person when they hear the term business ethics. the Cold War was ever present. The second strand of the story that I shall tell has to do with business ethics as an academic field. The media carries stories about Enron officials acting unethically and about the unethical activities of Arthur Andersen or WorldCom. The Civil Rights movement had caught the public imagination.business activities. and the general public takes this as representative of business ethics or of the need for it. and the War in Viet Nam fostered a good deal of opposition to official public policy and to the socalled military-industrial complex. Prior to this time there had been a handful of courses called by that name. were handled in social issues courses. finding themselves under public attack and criticism.Corporations. in the 1960s such courses put an emphasis on law. by implication. describes social responsibility as a pyramid that encompasses the four types of responsibility that businesses have: At the bottom is economic. For the most part. who dealt with ethics and business. although soon that of employees. and the point of view of managers prevailed. and a few figures. as well as media pundits continued writing and teaching on ethics in business. consumers and the general public were added. that is not the story of business ethics I am going to tell today. And although some representatives of corporate social responsibility claim that they did business ethics before business ethics became popular and although some claim that what they do is business ethics. and tended to be more concerned with empirical studies than with the development or defense of norms against which to measure corporate activity. But whether it was reforestation or cutting down on pollution or increasing diversity in the workforce. if they were discussed. The history of the social responsibility movement is a story in itself and one that different people are writing somewhat differently. The business schools responded by developing courses in social responsibility or social issues in management—courses which continue to thrive today. The new ingredient and the catalyst that led to the field of business ethics as such was the entry of a significant number of philosophers. who brought ethical theory and . Theologians and religious thinkers. then legal. by Archie Carroll. Business ethics as an academic field emerged in the 1970s. that made up for some unethical or anti-social activity with which the company had been charged. For the most part ethical issues. responded by developing the notion of social responsibility. They started social responsibility programs and spent a good deal of money advertising their programs and how they were promoting the social good. The textbooks paid no systematic attention to ethical theory. professors of management continued to write and do research on corporate social responsibility. Exactly what "social responsibility" meant varied according to the industry and company. social responsibility was the term used to capture those activities of a corporation that were beneficial to society and usually. such as Raymond Baumhart. then ethical and then philanthropic. One version. Ethical Theory and Business. and courses in business ethics both in philosophy departments and in schools of business developed rapidly. Business ethics as an academic discipline had ethics as its basis. Norman Bowie dates the birth of business ethics as November 1974. the number of textbooks increased exponentially. Business ethics emerged as a result of the intersection of ethical theory with empirical studies and the analysis of cases and issues. Velasquez. and which resulted in the first anthology used in the new courses that started popping up thereafter in business ethics. which was held at the University of Kansas. Whereas most of those who wrote on social issues were professors of business. and the name paralleled that of the earlier field—although even whether the term "business ethics" should be adopted was discussed among the relatively small group that was engaged in starting what has become a field. Ethical Issues in Business: A Philosophical Approach. In 1979 three anthologies in business ethics appeared: Tom Beauchamp and Norman Bowie. and Vincent Barry. most of those who wrote initially on business ethics were professors of philosophy.philosophical analysis to bear on a variety of issues in business. and especially corporate activities. Moral Issues in Business. and Manuel G. While social responsibility could be and was defined by corporations to cover whatever they did that they could present in a positive light as helping society. with the first conference in business ethics. A Theory of Justice. Business Ethics. Thomas Donaldson and Patricia Werhane. ethics had . had helped make the application of ethics to economic and business issues more acceptable to academic philosophers than had previously been the case.12 Whether one chooses that date or some other event. it is difficult to identify any previous period with the sort of concerted activity that developed in a short period thereafter. which had emerged ten years earlier in the 1960s. What differentiated business ethics as a field from social issues in management was 1) the fact that business ethics sought to provide an explicit ethical framework within which to evaluate business. The books found a ready market. The field developed very similarly to the field of medical ethics. Business Ethics: Concepts and Cases. some of whom taught in business schools. The seminal work of John Rawls in 1971. In 1982 the first single-authored books in the field appeared: Richard De George. As they did. To that extent. It took a number of years for the field to define itself. Related issues. with increasing attention. including marketing. were included in most courses and texts. As a result business ethics and business ethicists were not warmly received by the business community. or who. preaching by the uninformed who never had to face a payroll. of what was covered in social issues courses and texts. Many observers dismissed business ethics as a fad that would pass. as well as giving structure to discussions of . and of various economic systems. and more and more people entered the field who were often ill-informed. the activities of multinational corporations. as were. The development of the field was far from easy. and many of them had an antibusiness mind-set. incorporate standards of scholarship and rigor. The former typically did not see business as a philosophically interesting endeavor. and become accepted. of private property. Many misunderstood its aims and envisioned it as providing justification or a rationale for whatever business wanted to do. finance. most attention was focused on the corporation—its structure and activities. management. As a field.implicit in it standards that were independent of the wishes of corporations. 3) Although the field was concerned with managers and workers as moral persons with responsibilities as well as rights. The initial efforts were tenuous. such as the environmental impact of business actions. 2) the field was at least potentially critical of business practices—much more so than the social responsibility approach had been. business ethics included a good deal. in fact. and production. and those academics working in it initially also found a cool reception both from their colleagues in philosophy departments and from those in business and in business schools. adopted polemical attacks against or positions in defense of business. including all the functional areas of business. business ethics covered the ethical foundations of business. As a field. those in business ethics did not see ethics as coming after economics and law but as restraints on economic activity and as a source for justifying law and for proposing additional legal restraints on business when appropriate. but not all. If we take Archie Carroll's pyramid. who often perceived them as a threat—something they could not manage. The latter questioned whether philosophers had anything of interest to bring to business. How do you evaluate such problems as hiring the more qualified candidate for a job when she has a disability requiring costly adaptations to the work environment.ethics in business. Initial discussions of business ethics introduced students to two of the basic techniques of moral argumentation. However. but most authors take into account the fact that most people do attribute actions and policies to corporations as well as to the individuals within them. One such example is the collapse . business development. As it emerged by the middle of the 1980s it was clearly interdisciplinary. or whether the only proper objects of moral evaluation were human beings and their actions. and the ethics of caring (often associated with a feminist approach to ethics). that used by utilitarians (who hold that an action is right if it produces the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people). running or working in a business will raise many difficulties that are completely unrelated to the skills or knowledge gained in university. software engineering and computer programming. and the numerous stakeholders of the business. and that used by deontologists (who claim that duty. virtue ethics (based on Aristotle).? In recent years there have been several business scandals that caused serious damage to the credibility of the companies involved. Other approaches were soon introduced including natural law. This is all valuable and necessary knowledge to prepare them for the demands of employment in the business/IT sector. outsourcing production materials from countries where child labour and sweatshops are prevalent etc. That controversy has not completely subsided. justice and rights are not reducible to considerations of utility). An initial philosophical discussion that arose concerned the moral status of corporations and whether one could appropriately use moral language with respect to them. occasionally the entire industry in which they operate. with the lines between philosophy and business research often blurred. The Role of Business Ethics Today Business and IT students spend the majority of their time at university learning about economics. of Barings Bank . Charlie Haughey and Martha Stewart are two such examples of people with considerable wealth and public standing who have been involved in questionable business dealings. It has been discovered that many high profile people (at home and abroad) are involved in tax-evasion. you are well equipped with knowledge of your subject. and this will be built on when you go into the workplace due to on-going training and other such practices. At this stage in your course. During this course on business ethics it is hoped that you will be given such an opportunity and attain a working knowledge of the different theoretical frameworks that can be applied to business .the actions of one rogue trader incurred losses of almost US$1 billion. insider trading and fraud. But it is fair to say that some of you may have never had the chance to think of the ethical issues entailed in business and IT . Secondary sources . large surveys. direct ovservationas . Common sources of secondary data for social science Include censuses. these two terms have different meaning .Research methodology As far as research is concerned the data can be collected in only two formi i. In terms of historical research. A secondary source is summary of a book or set of records. Primary data is the data that the researcher is collecting themselves using methords such as surveys . A primary source is a book or a set of archival records . and organizational records . secondary data is data collected and possibly processed by people other than the reseasrcher in question. interviews. well as logs(objective data sources). Secondary data In research. The first type is a primary source which is the initial material that is collected during the research process. Primary data is a reliable way to collect data because the researcher will know where it came from and how it was collected and analyzed since they did it themselves . Secondary data analysis There are two different types of sources that need to be established in order to conduct a good analysis .e primary data or secondry data . In sociology primary data is data you have collected and secondary data is you mhave gathered from primary to create a new research . in this research work secondary data has been used . Secondary sources on the on the other hand are sources that are based upon the data that was collected from the primary source. Common sources of secondary data are social science surveys and data from government agencies. The data collected more often collected via surveys research methords. Secondary data is analysis commonly kown as second-hand analysis. including the bureau of the census. Secondary data analysis utilizes the data that was collected by someone else in order to furher a study that you are interested in completing . the Bureau of the census. and combining the information from the primary source with additional information. . Data from experimental studies may also be used. explaining.take the role of analyzing. It is simply the analysis of preexisting data in a different way or to answer a different question than originally intended. the Bureau of labour Statistics and various other agencies. Turnover were not given Biasness is the most serious limitation.LIMITATIONS • • • • • Due to non availability of the concerned persons questions remained unanswered. Realibility of data is dependen on their honesty. . Retailers behavior are not accessed correctly. Ethical problems – Ethical standards change over time – Human reasoning is imperfect – Ethical standards and principles are not always • adequate to resolve conflicts . cCONCLUSION • establishing organizational values • nurturing individual responsibility • providing leadership & oversight • relating decisions to stakeholder interests • developing accountability • relating consequences • auditing & improvement making in the organization? • culture. values & programs • compliance & leadership • recognition of the role of co-workers & managers • balancing stakeholder interests • management of situational pressures • rewards beyond short-term performance – business ethics is often “squeezed out” of the core & is not fully represented in the curriculum development process – faculty members trained in traditional business disciplines often feel they lack the training & expertise – different cultural & historical perspectives make it difficult to define & teach . ethics.org/ BOOKS Title:Business Ethics at Work Author: Elizabeth Vallance Publisher: Cambridge University Press .Bibliography www.org/ International Business Ethics Institute at http://www.com Ethics Resource Center at http://www.itcportal.business-ethics.