JANE DIAZ

MR. PAJO

BSIM

ITETHICS

BOOKREVIEW # 13

MANAGING BUSINESS ETHICS: STRAIGHT TALK HOW TO DO IT RIGHT

By: Linda K. Trino

HF5387

Chapter I – Where We’re Going and Why

We began dialogue and over time discovered that we had a lot in common. We

had both learned that many students whether on a campus or in corporation felt

immediately by the subject of ethics. We had both listened to their frustrations. Many of

the readers are business school students, the future managers of business enterprises.

We’re concerned that may be the problem in this group, to check their ethics at the

corporate door or they will be pressured to compromise their ethical standards in order

to succeed.

Another false assumption guiding the view that business ethics can’t be taught is

the belief that one’s ethics are fully formed and unchangeable by the time one is old

enough to enter college or a job.

Chapter II – Why be Ethical?

As workers, we should care about ethics because most of us prefer to work for

ethical organizations. We want to feel good about ourselves and the work we do. As

managers, we must be concerned about the ethics of the people who report to us. More

than just our jobs depend on this concern recent legislation has made managers liable

for the criminal activities of their subordinates.

Organizations must care about ethics because workers depend on them to help

define the boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable behavior. Also, ethical lapses can

cost an organization dearly in shattered customer confidence, increased government

regulation, and huge fines. But, most important, we as individuals must care about

ethics. Regardless of what kind of jobs we hold, we are human beings first. We must

care enough to protect people. Classical economists assume that practically all human

behavior, including altruism, is motivated solely by self-interest that humans are purely

rational economic actors who make choices solely on the basis of cold cost/benefit

analyses. But there is much evidence to suggest that people also act for altruistic or

moral purposes that seem to have little to do with cost/benefit analyses.

Chapter III – Common Ethical Problems

A distinction is made between moral indoctrination and instruction in ethics. It

argued that the legitimate and important field of computer ethics should not be permitted

to become mere moral propaganda. Computer ethics is an academic field in its own right

with unique ethical issues that would not have existed if computer technology had not

been invented. Several example issues are presented to illustrate this point. The failure

to find satisfactory non-computer analogies testifies to the uniqueness of computer

ethics. Lack of an effective analogy forces us to discover new moral values, formulate

new moral principles, develop new policies, and find new ways to think about the issues

presented to us. For all of these reasons, the kind of issues presented deserves to be

addressed separately from others that might at first appear similar. At the very least,

they have been transformed by computing technology that their altered form demands

special attention.