How are personal and professional ethics formed in business?

"Every day, managers and business owners make business decisions based on what they believe to be right and wrong. Through their actions, they demonstrate to their employees what is and is not acceptable behavior and shape the moral standard of the organization. As you will see in this module, personal and professional ethics are important cornerstones of an organization and shape its ultimate contributions to society in the form of corporate social responsibility. First, let’s consider how individual business ethics are formed. 2.1 Understanding Business Ethics 1. What philosophies and concepts shape personal ethical standards? Ethics is a set of moral standards for judging whether something is right or wrong. The first step in understanding business ethics is learning to recognize an ethical issue . An ethical issue is a situation where someone must choose between a set of actions that may be ethical or unethical. For example, Martin Shkreli, former CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, raised the price of a drug used for newborns and HIV patients by more than 5000 percent, defending the price increase as a “great business decision.” 1 Few people would call that ethical behavior. But consider the actions of the stranded, hungry people in New Orleans who lost everything in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. They broke into flooded stores, taking food and bottled water without paying for them. Was this unethical behavior? Or what about the small Texas plastics manufacturer that employed over 100 people and specialized in the Latin American market? The president was distraught because he knew the firm would be bankrupt by the end of the year if it didn’t receive more contracts. He knew that he was losing business because he refused to pay bribes. Bribes were part of the culture in his major markets. Closing the firm would put many people out of work. Should he start paying bribes in order to stay in business? Would this be unethical? Let’s look at the next section to obtain some guidance on recognizing unethical situations."