Understanding Ethical Business Practice


Overview/Description
Target Audience
Expected Duration
Lesson Objectives
Course Number


Overview/Description
Business ethics--the rights and wrongs of working practice--are the foundations on which the rights of the individual at work are built. Ethics, to some, can mean an expensive way of losing competitive advantage. This course explodes the myths surrounding ethics, and shows how practicing ethical business can have both financial and competitive benefits. Ethics are a growing trend in business, and you can make a valuable contribution to your organisation by understanding ethical business practice. By completing this course, you will explore current ethical business thinking, identifying not only the principles that come from general ethical philosophy, but also the perception that real business people have of ethics in business. To make business ethics happen, you need to make a case for them, and this course establishes the financial and other benefits that come from implementing ethical business practices.

Target Audience
Managers and supervisors in any organisation, who are interested in ethical business practices.

Expected Duration (hours)
3.0

Lesson Objectives

The Background to Business Ethics

  • recognise the value of examining the principles of ethics in general as an aid to exploring ethics in business.
  • distinguish between ethics and morality.
  • differentiate between absolute and relative perspectives on ethics.
  • analyse a case study from the perspective of different stakeholders to identify ethical issues in business.

    • Identifying Ethics in Business

  • recognise the value of identifying ethical business practices.
  • identify the reasons for the growth of ethics in business.
  • match the principles that underpin ethical practices in business with definitions of each.
  • determine the underlying causes for ambiguity in attitudes to unethical behaviour in a given business situation.
  • identify the business view of expected ethical behaviour as contained in the Industrial Society Survey 1996.
  • contrast the business view of expected ethical behaviour with the evidence of real behaviour as contained in the Industrial Society Survey 1996.

    • The Benefits of Business Ethics

  • recognise the value of effective arguments for employing ethical business practices in an organisation.
  • apply the appropriate financial arguments for implementing ethical practices in a given scenario.
  • identify appropriate value-based arguments for implementing ethical business practices in an organisation.
  • give the procedural benefits of employing ethical practices in a given context.

    • Course Number:
    HR8121