6301 Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility

Assignment 1

What ends do ethical values serve?

Ethical values are the set of moral principles that guide a person's behavior. These values make
sense when practised in day to day life. These values reflect beliefs about what is right, what is
wrong, what is just, what is unjust, what is good, and what is bad in terms of human behavior.
Ethical values are guiding force how people should behave toward each other, understand and
fulfil their obligations to society, and live their lives. In fact ethical values teach co existence.
Ethical values form a strong basis not only for human beings but for business houses and
organisations also. Business ethics and corporateethics are often used to describe the
application of ethical values to business activities. People upholding ethical values can run
businesses to be fair, clean and beneficial to the society. Recent incidents of corruption and
scams by individuals and government organisations have made the ethics more important. Deep
ethical values will never allow people to work for selfish ends.
I believe that ethical values prove useful to individual as well as society because whatever is
achieved in life is the result of honesty, discipline and integrity. Being fair, honest and ethical is
one of the basic human needs. Every employee desires to be associated with an organization
that is fair and ethical in its deals.
Organizations guided by ethics and values are profitable in the long run, though in the short run
they may seem to lose money. Corporate houses have realised the value of ethics that is why
workshops and training sessions are held to instil ethics in employees. These values can help in
sustainable development of organisations. Ethical values save from legal complications as there
is no corruption, fraud and cheating involved. Ethics try to create a sense of right and wrong in
the organizations and often when the law fails, it is the ethics that may stop them from harming
the society or environment.
Ethical values help to use money, time and effort in productive uses rather than selfish personal
gains. CSR activities are the best examples adopted by organisations to contribute towards
society. Infosys and Aditya Birla Group for example are perceived as an organization for good
corporate governance and social responsibility initiatives.