Business and morality

Business and morality

Questions about moral behavior in business are now prominent against a background of obscenely inflated CEO pay packages, stock option backdating and other scandals. But how do you get a handle on moral behavior in business? Is it about corporate social responsibility? Better treatment of employees?

These are some of the questions in a paper from the Knowledge@Emory series titled Defining and Understanding the Need for a Moral Approach in Business.

Interestingly, it finds that ethics courses in business and law schools don't provide the complete answer. It suggests that business leaders need to start relying on a more "intuitive" response. In other words, the key question to ask is not whether something is legal but whether it's right.

It's a point I have explored in blog entries here and here where I looked at the difference between ethics and morality.

The problem of course is that most business training is about suppressing intuitive gut feel.


Trackback

no comment untill now

Add your comment now