OB 330, Spring 2010University of Massachusetts Amherst

Ethics◦ Reflecting on and recommending concepts of

right and wrong behavior

Corporate social responsibility (CSR)◦ Organizations seek to meet or exceed legal and

normatively mandated standards, by considering the greater good of the widest possible community within which they exist

◦ In both local and global terms, with regard to the environmental, social, economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic impact of the organizations’ way of conducting business and the activities they undertake

Sustainability ◦ Literally, ensuring that resources are renewed ◦ A sustainable use of resources would leave the

world short of nothing that was depleted in any process – that resource would be renewed

◦ Ensuring that nothing deleterious to the world’s natural systems resulted from whatever processes were being undertaken

Thinking about ethics◦ The core issue in business ethics is how

businesses ought to act in an ethically sound way

◦ As Milton Friedman believes, should an organization do no more than to fulfill its function, as long as it does so within the market mechanism?

◦ Should an organization ensure it meets all socially desirable needs and wants relevant to its practices?

◦ Questions of business ethics do not have easy answers

Normative ethics◦ Seeks to establish means of judging whether

business practices are right or wrong

Descriptive ethics◦ Does not seek for normative guidelines that ought

to be applied in practice, but rather monitors and describes what actually happens

When rules work to effect compliance When rules work as ceremonial facades When ethical rules are at odds with other rules