Business ethics lecture 3

Business Ethics


Corporate Governance


Fiduciaries:
 Persons

placed in positions of trust who use
due care and loyalty in acting on behalf of
the best interest of the organization.



Duty of Diligence:
A

duty of care to make informed and
prudent decions.



Duty of loyalty;
 All

decisions should be in the interests of the
corporation and its stakeholders.




Conflict of Interest:
 When

a person in a powerful authority
uses the position to obtain personal
gain usually at the expense of the
organization.



BoD and Officers’ compensation !




To remove the opportunity for
employees to make unethical
decions; developed formal systems
of accountability, oversight, and
control are knwn as corporate
governance.




Accountability:
How closely workplace decisions are aligned
with a firm’s stated strategic direction.
 Alco compliance with ethical and legal

considerations.




Oversight:


A system of checks and balances that limits
employees’ and managers’ opportunities to
deviate from policies and strategies and
that prevent unethical and illegal activities.




Control:
 Process

of auditing and improving
organizational decisions and actions.




Collusion;
A

secret agreement between two
parties for a fraudulent, illegal, or

deceitful purpose.
 Deceitful purpose; “any sort of trickery,
misinterpretation, or a strategy to lead
others to believe one truth but not the
entire truth”


Honesty


“Tell the truth to the best of your
knowledge without hiding anything”.



Confucius
 Li
 Yi
 Ren



Absence of honesty = ?


Fairness


Being just, equitable and impartial
 Equity

 Reciprocity
 Optimization


Integrity






Being whole, sound and in an
unimpaired condition.
Uncompromising adherence to
ethical values.
Unwillingness to deviate from
standards of behaviour.