What is business?
Business includes economic exchanges between:
Individuals
Individuals and companies
Different companies
Examples include buying, selling, employing people and providing services.
Why can the meaning of business differ between societies?
Different societies may have different ideas about:
Which activities count as business
What businesses should be responsible for
Which business practices are acceptable
What is the first main feature of business?
Business has an economic character.
This means people interact mainly as:
Buyers and sellers
Employers and employees
What is the second main feature of business?
Business usually takes place inside organizations.
Organizations have:
Different positions and responsibilities
A hierarchy
Shared goals
What is morality?
Morality is a system of rules that tells us which human actions are:
Right or wrong
Good or bad
Example: Stealing is morally wrong.
What are moral standards?
Moral standards are rules and values about morally right and wrong behaviour.
They include ideas such as:
Honesty
Fairness
Human rights
Duty
Dignity
Integrity
What are nonmoral standards?
Nonmoral standards judge behaviour in ways that are not mainly about serious right or wrong.
Examples include:
Etiquette
Fashion
Grammar
Aesthetic standards
Some laws or organizational rules
What is the main difference between moral and nonmoral standards?
Moral standards concern serious questions of harm, justice and human well-being.
Nonmoral standards usually concern manners, preferences or social rules.
Example:
“Do not steal” = moral
“Do not eat with your mouth open” = nonmoral
Are ethics and morality the same?
They are closely connected but not exactly the same.
Morality means the rules and beliefs about right and wrong.
Ethics means examining and questioning those moral rules.
What is ethics?
Ethics is the study of moral standards.
It examines whether our ideas about right and wrong are:
Reasonable
Justified
Consistent
Suitable for real situations
When does a person begin to “do ethics”?
A person begins to do ethics when they stop simply accepting moral rules and begin asking questions such as:
Does this rule make sense?
What reasons support it?
Is it fair?
What are its consequences?
What are the six characteristics of moral standards?
Harm
Authority
Priority
Impartiality
Emotions
Universality
What does harm mean as a characteristic of moral standards?
Moral standards deal with actions that can cause serious harm or important benefits.
Fraud
Theft
Murder
Abuse
Enslavement
What does authority mean as a characteristic of moral standards?
Moral standards are not right only because an authority creates them.
They must be supported by good reasons.
Example: An action can still be morally wrong even when a manager or government allows it.
What does priority mean as a characteristic of moral standards?
Moral standards normally have priority over personal benefit.
Example: Earning more money does not automatically justify lying to customers.
What does impartiality mean?
Moral decisions should not depend only on who benefits.
Similar people and situations should be judged fairly.
Example: A lie does not become morally acceptable simply because you benefit from it.
What does emotion mean as a characteristic of moral standards?
Moral actions are connected to special emotions such as:
Guilt
Shame
Remorse
Moral anger
These emotions often appear when people believe a moral rule has been broken.
What does universality mean?
Moral standards are normally expected to apply to everyone.
People should follow them even when:
They do not want to
Breaking them would be profitable
An authority permits the action
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