BUSA 2106 LEGAL ENVIRONMENT Ethics Business Decision Making Edwin K Palmer Ethics And what is good and what is not good Need we ask anyone to tell us these things Plato Ethics Greed for lack of a better word is good Greed is right Greed works Greed Clarifies cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit Greed in all of its forms has marked the upward surge of mankind Gordon Gekko Wall Street Social Responsibility of Business Stakeholder Approach What does corporate America owe to it s employees customers creditors suppliers etc Corporate Citizenship What does corporate America owe to society Errors of Omission Commission ERROR OF COMMISSION what you did that perhaps you shouldn t have ERROR OF OMISSION what you did not do that perhaps you should have Duty Based Ethics Immanuel Kant Universalizability and reversibility Religious humanistic compassionate Do unto others as you would have them do unto you It s not the consequence of the act that matters it s the nature of the act itself Deontilogical all about motivation Utilitarianism Jeremy Bentham It s not the act that matters Look to the result The greatest good for society or the greatest good for the greatest number of people Teleological all about the consequences Ethics At the heart of liberty is the right to define one s own concept of existence of meaning of the universe and of the mystery of human life United States Supreme Court 1973 If this be true do you not determine for yourself what is good and what is not good what is ethically right and what is ethically wrong In so doing do you not then determine what you should do Do you always do the right thing