My Learning Journey… in COMM101: Principles of Responsible Commerce Initially, before I learn this course, I have always thought that a “responsible commerce” is only important to balance the economic cycle. In my initial essay regarding “responsible commerce”, I mentioned about child labor being one of the biggest issue of irresponsible commerce, I thought the reason of it being such a big issue was because it would affect the whole economical cycle. And I did not realize that responsible commerce would involve different kinds of principles of ethics and elements in business,
Through this subject I have learned that ethical principles and standards in business define acceptable conduct in businesses which underpin how management makes decisions. Business ethics reflects the philosophy of business, one of whose aims is to determine the fundamental purposes of a company. However, behaving ethically is not quite the same thing as behaving lawfully, because ethics are about what is right and what is wrong; while law is about what is lawful and what is unlawful. What is unethical does not mean it is unlawful, for example, if a driver sees a car crash while he was driving, ethically, he should have stopped his car to see if there is any help that he could provide to the victim, but, still, it does not violate the law if he does not stop to help. It is the same in business. It would be ethical to take up partial responsibility to take care of the unfortunate after earning so much profit from the people; but not taking up the responsibility does not cause them to violate the law either.
Another thing that I have learned about ethics is that there are different principles to define what is right or wrong. I would consider myself as a utilitarian because I have always thought that whether a matter is right or wrong depends on its consequence. If a person tells a lie, so that he would not hurt somebody’s feelings, he is ethically right. However, Kant’s
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