Eight Lenses In Business Ethics

1. Introduction – ethics – what are they?

Ethics (or moral philosophy) is the kind of philosophy that define concept of right or wrong conduct. In practice, ethics try to resolve questions of human morality, by explaining concepts of good and evil.

Ethics, culture, morals – are bind together, they are embedded.

Every single person follow some system of values and ethics, in private life. But also in business life, in a workplace. Ethics are about what is and what should it be. It depends from your point of view, which is subjective. Right or wrong, depends from your perception.

Ethics are above the law.
Ethics – it’s not what business want to achieve – there is no choice; it’s how it’s done – there is choice – strategy.

Summary of the

The purpose of the review is to develop understanding of better work and working lives. But I personally think that this report could be more of a guidelines for any company. These eight lenses are:

Fairness - Everyone in an organisation should be able to agree to it, whatever their place in it.

Well-being - Work should be good for us.

Merit - Jobs and their rewards should track talent and hard work.

Rights and Duties - Everyone has rights to do some things and to be free of some things, and everyone has duties not to violate others’ rights.

Markets - Jobs and their rewards should follow from voluntary market exchanges.

Character - Each of us should work to develop the best ethical character for our roles.

Democracy - No one should be subject to a regime in which they have no say.

Handing Down - We can’t reinvent or master the world, and are instead responsible for conserving and maintaining the small part of it over which we currently have stewardship, and for passing it on undamaged to our descendants.

2. Advantages and disadvantages of ethics.

Pros: - better employee motivation and

Philippa Foster Back said that the organisation will have choices to make, on daily basis. And if harassment or bullying of any sort happens, there need to be given some guidence to individuals, about a code of ethics.
Or what’s even more important, employees need to know, where they can turn to, to whom, with their situation, especially if they can’t trust manager.
Laura Harrison said, that ethics have a major role in HR, but we don’t pay enough attention to it, or at least recently we didn’t, because HR professionals want to prove, that they are commercial partner in the business.
In my opinion, only because HR are professionals and want to be commercial, and there is nothing wrong with that, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t be ethical role models for company and all stakeholders.
Philippa Foster Back says that apparently most of large companies have seperate function that looks after ethics, but she see no tension between ethics and commerciality, because ‘doing business ethically makes for better