Notesale: Turn your study into money

Document Preview

Extracts from the notes are below, to see the PDF you'll receive please use the links above

---

BUSINESS IN ITS DIVERSE MORAL CONTEXT
Business is an important institution in society
...

Every business is a network of people making and managing commitments to
satisfy customers
...

Understanding the Business: To understand any business the critical step is
to explore all the factors related to business and properly judging their impact
on the business
...
All these forces come under one word called
environment
...

Environment refers to all external forces which have a bearing on the functioning
of business

Technological environment
The computer and the World Wide Web (WWW) are two of the most significant
inventions of the twentieth century
...
” Company
supply chains are also becoming virtually and globally integrated online
...

Technological revolutions and ethics
Technology generates many ethical problems that may not be treated easily
under existing ethical policies
...

When the effect is helpful; good, right, just—we say the behavior is praiseworthy
or exemplary
...
All ethical questions arise initially out of human agency and
actions
...

Question; under what circumstances has technology been misused?
The areas to consider include; confidentiality, security, marketing, providing
services electronically, and accessibility are identified as areas where most
Page 1 of 6

people often face ethical risks in using technology
...

There has been transformation of the economy of scale, speed, scope, improved
efficiency and transactions through information technology
...
The boundary between surveillance
and convenience also continues to bring distortions in businesses
...
while it is easy to
gain access to information, there are case of
Data mining is process of collecting, searching through and analyzing data in
the database so as to discover patterns of relationships
...

Opportunities brought by technology
Challenges
- Speed delivery of e-commerce
- pollution
- Reduced costs and risks
- lack of privacy
- Social innocations (Whats app innovations
- unemployment
- Accuracy
- abuse of /loss of copy rights
- Ease of access
- Ease of use
- money laundering
- Increased work productivity
- frauds and theft banks eg use of ATM
- Improved working conditions
- Fraud in mobile money services
- Effective resource utilization
- data mining
- Widening the market
- harking of mails
- Sharing of information on music, files mails etc
Medical technology has improved as well
...


International environment
The need to expand markets of the giant and prosperous corporations gave rise
to international business that paved way to search for competitive advantage
...

International business gives rise to host and home countries
...
Business ethics behavior of firms in a global context can
be described in two different frameworks: relativism or absolutism
...
On the other hand
Absolutism argues that “home country cultural and ethical values must be
applied everywhere as they are at home”
...
Instead of absolutism
“Cosmopolitan” culture which means to be sensitive to cross-cultural
differences regarding ethical issues
...
Relativism: Adopting the local norms,
2
...
Universalism: Enforcing universal moral principles
...

Ethical Issues in International Business
• Many of the ethical issues and dilemmas in international business are rooted
in the fact that political systems, law, economic development, and culture vary
significantly from nation to nation
...

The growth of international business compelled the multinational corporations
to develop universal ethical standards/ principles in bid to guard against
cultural and ethical value violations
...

- Respect for human dignity
...

-

The increase in knowledge and technology and population has left
businesses with no option other than encroaching on the natural
environment survival
...
Which are in turn affected by the commercial activities of business
firms
...

- air and water pollution
Page 3 of 6

-

depletion of resources
Oil spills from petroleum industries destroy shorelines and kill millions of
sea animals
- The burning of fossils fuels such as oil, gas and coal produces excess
carbon dioxide which adds to global warming through a greenhouse effect
...


Cultural environment
How does culture influence ethical decision-making?
Whereas common values may exist in different cultures, they differ significantly
in their application to a specific issue
...
Forexample two
cultures may share the cultural values of respect for human dignity but take
they take widely different positions on the practice of abortion and euthanasia
...

Hofstede defines culture as “the collective programming of the mind that
distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another
...

This cultural typology is based on the findings of several studies (i
...
, Hofstede,
1979-1984)
...
Although
inequality exists within every culture, the degree to which it is accepted
varies from culture to culture
...
Collectivist cultures, in contrast, assume that
individuals belong to one or more "in-groups" (e
...
, extended family, clan,
or other organization) from which they cannot detach themselves
...

Masculinity', according to Hofstede, is the extent to which individuals in a
society expect men (as opposed to women) to be assertive, ambitious,
competitive, to strive for material success, and to respect whatever is big,
strong and fast
...
Feminine cultures, on the
other hand, define relatively overlapping social roles for both sexes with neither
men nor women needing to be overly ambitious or competitive
...

Uncertainty avoidance is defined as the extent to which individuals within
a culture are made nervous by situations that are unstructured, unclear,
or unpredictable, and the extent to which these individuals attempt to avoid
such situations by adopting strict codes of behavior and a belief in absolute
truth
...
On the other hand, cultures with weak
uncertainty avoidance are contemplative, less aggressive, unemotional,
accepting of personal risk, and relatively tolerant
...


Page 6 of 6



---