Business Ethics

Business ethics is basically a type of principle of applied ethics, which analyzes various ethical rules and ethical or moral problems that may take place in a commercial environment. In the 21st Century, one of the most significant aspects of the commercial marketplaces all over the world is the growing focus on conscience.
As a result, the necessity for highly ethical business practices (which is also referred as ethicism) is on the rise. At the same time, force is also being applied on businesses and industries for the development of business ethics with the help of novel public efforts and regulations (for example, increased amount of road tax in the United Kingdom for vehicles with higher emission).

Business ethics can take the form of a descriptive field (subject area ) or normative field. The descriptive discipline is applied in the academic world. The normative discipline is basically implemented as a corporate device and it is also utilized in the form of career specialization.

The number and degree of business ethical issues gives the evidence of how much a business is compliant with the social values (non-economic).

The different forms of business ethics can be categorized into the following types:

General business ethics

These ethics deal with the following issues:

• Corporate social responsibility (CSR)
• Fiduciary responsibility
• Corporate governance
• Industrial espionage
• Hostile take-overs
• Corporate manslaughter
• Political contributions

Professional business ethics

The professional business ethics can be categorized into the following types:

Ethics of human resource management (HRM)

• Discrimination issues
• Strike breaking or union busting
• Drug testing
• Workplace surveillance
• Whistle-blowing
• Occupational safety and health
• Employment law
• Indentured servitude

Ethics of accounting information

• Kickbacks
• Creative accounting
• Earnings management
• Misleading financial analysis
• Insider trading
• Securities fraud
• Bucket shop
• Forex scams
• Executive compensation
• Bribery
• Facilitation payments

Ethics of production

• Harmful, addictive, or defective products
• Environmental ethics
• Pollution
• Carbon emissions trading
• Health
• Mobile phone radiation
• Genetically modified food
• Product testing ethics like animal testing and animal rights

Ethics of sales and marketing

• Pricing: Price discrimination, price fixing, price skimming
• Anticompetitive practices
• Particular marketing strategies: Greenwash, shill, bait and switch, spam (computer), viral marketing, pyramid scheme, and planned obsolescence
• Advertisement contents: Attack ads or promos, sex in advertisements, and subliminal messages
• Marketing in schools
• Grey markets and black markets

Ethics of intellectual property, skills, and knowledge

• Patent infringement, trademark infringement, copyright infringement
• Patent misuse, patent troll, copyright misuse, submarine patent
• Employee raiding
• Biopiracy and bioprospecting
• Industrial espionage
• Business intelligence

International business ethics

• Transfer pricing
• Fair trade pricing
• Cultural imperialism
• Globalization
• Child labor

A large number of companies are appointing business ethics officers as a part of their compliance and ethics programs, and these officers are also known as risk and compliance officers.