Question 1: In the 1960s, Milton Friedman said that the purpose of business was to increase shareholder return and that issues of ethics were not the concern of any business – the law should be complied with, morality should be strived for, but ethical consideration had no place in the business environment.
Ø Consider the multiple publics (employees, suppliers, consumers, communities, and shareholders for example) that are involved in all business transactions.
Ø Explain why ethical consideration IS appropriate and required when conducting business in the 21rst century.
Ø Give some specific examples of ethical issues that confront businesses and how these might be addressed.
Answer 1: While doing some research about Friedman’s…show more content… So, accommodating ethics in today’s world is very important to keep the advantage against the competitors. Today, everything can change in a short period of time and the reputation, sales and profits of a company can go down easily because of an ethical issue.
Being ethical can help a company to stay compatible with today’s trade trends. Furthermore, good reputation will help them gain more profit and the products will be wanted in the market. It would help the employees to keep their work desires high, therefore the productivity at work would be higher. Also, a big advantage would be because ethical business would attract investors and the share price of a company will be higher.
There are many factors that lead a company to become unethical and all these cases never end well. The latest unethical issue that I can think of is from LIVESTRONG Foundation. Lance Armstrong was the undisputed champion but other people were always suspicious about his victories and trophies. As they say, you may get away 99 times, but it takes only time if they catch you and your career will be over. That is exactly what happened from the doping scandal and things started to go wrong when Nike terminated the contract, but again, this is a controversy decision because they are still supporting Tiger Woods even though he was involved in a sex scandal. So, Nike made an ethical decision against Armstrong
