ADMS 1000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Business Ethics, Family Values, Profit Maximization

• School: York University
• Department: Administrative Studies
• Course: ADMS 1000
• Professor: PeterModir

Document Summary

No one universal definition of business ethics. Business ethics: the rules, standards, principles, or codes giving guidelines for morally right behaviour in certain contexts. Unethical ethics: behaviour that in some way has a harmful effect on others and is either illegal or morally unacceptable to the larger community. Two models used to describe the basis of judging the ethics of organizational decisions: utilitarian, or end-point ethics, rule ethics. End-point ethics: assessing the rightness or wrongness of an action by its outcomes. Its modern counterparts are cost-benefit ad risk-benefit analysis. Utilitarianism: a way to determine if an action is right or wrong by assessing the likely consequences of the action, including tangible economic outcomes (profit for shareholders) or intangible outcomes (happiness or friendship). Utilitarianism assets that an action is ethical if it produces, or if it tends to produce, the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people affected by the action.