Intro to Business - Business Ethics and Social Responsibilities.

Lecture 3: Business Ethics and Social Responsibilities

Ethics are beliefs or ideas about what is :

• Right vs Wrong
• Good vs Evil
• Fair vs Unfair

Different people may have different perception about what is ethical and what is unethical.

However, ethical does'nt means that it is legal. Legal is following the law while ethical is doing something morally right.

Areas of Business Ethics and Social responsibilities:

• Environment
• Customers
• Employees
• Investors

Common steps to discourage unethical and illegal activity:

• Adopting writing codes - Set of rules
• Instituting ethics program

Approaches to Social Responsibilities:

• Obstructionist
• Defensive
• Accomodative
• Proactive

Class Activity - Case Study

Discussion 
1) What is advertising? What is its purpose?

• The activity or profession of producing advertisements for commercial products or services to persuade consumers to spend money on the products or service.

2) What is false advertising? Why do some companies engage in false advertising?

•  The use of false or misleading statements in advertising, and misrepresentation of the product at hand, which may negatively affect many stakeholders, especially consumers. As advertising has the potential to persuade people into commercial transactions, they use it to earn money.

3) Provide a 1 or 2-minute video example of false advertising (you may use YouTube for this section).

4) What can we do about it? Suggest 2 solutions.

• Laws and Regulations
• Federal Trade Comission

Due to the technical problem and the lack of time, our group didn't get a chance to present our case study in the class.

 I learned about the difference between ethical and legally right. There are always things that are morally right but illegal and vice versa even though most of the times things which are legal are morally right. Besides that I understands that different culture will have different perception on what is ethical and different countries will have different laws.