Unethical Business Practices
Alberto Martinez. Unethical Business Practices
The modern business world is characterized for being aggressive and competitive.
Companies must be alert and always ready to take advantage of opportunities as quickly as possible. If companies are not aggressive enough they risk losing business to other competitors.
For all these reasons, many people now question whether there is a place for ethics in this highly competitive capitalist economy. However, is it good for companies to create aggressive organizational cultures? After all, the most aggressive organizational cultures also have shown to be the most unethical ones. Aggressive cultures often end up failing because they allow employees to conduct unethical business practices. Unethical business practices are actions that go against the typical or expected standards of professional business behavior. These actions are often used to gain an unfair advantage against other companies. However instead of creating long term benefits, these actions most likely will end up causing problems such as legal complications and general mistrust. The recent scandals of Enron, Tyco, and WorldCom are examples of only few of the many companies that have permanently damaged their operations due to their inability to conduct proper business.
Vittal's (2005) in his article has said that:
The issue of ethical practices and clean governance has recently become a major issue in public debate globally for a number of reasons. From the global business point of view, the collapse of the South East Asian economies in the mid-1997 and the dramatic collapse of the Fortune 500 companies which were the darlings of the stock market, like
Enron, WorldCom, etc. in 2000 brought out dramatically that while it may be possible for Martinez 2
a company to achieve dramatic and highly satisfying results in the short run in terms of
The modern business world is characterized for being aggressive and competitive.
Companies must be alert and always ready to take advantage of opportunities as quickly as possible. If companies are not aggressive enough they risk losing business to other competitors.
For all these reasons, many people now question whether there is a place for ethics in this highly competitive capitalist economy. However, is it good for companies to create aggressive organizational cultures? After all, the most aggressive organizational cultures also have shown to be the most unethical ones. Aggressive cultures often end up failing because they allow employees to conduct unethical business practices. Unethical business practices are actions that go against the typical or expected standards of professional business behavior. These actions are often used to gain an unfair advantage against other companies. However instead of creating long term benefits, these actions most likely will end up causing problems such as legal complications and general mistrust. The recent scandals of Enron, Tyco, and WorldCom are examples of only few of the many companies that have permanently damaged their operations due to their inability to conduct proper business.
Vittal's (2005) in his article has said that:
The issue of ethical practices and clean governance has recently become a major issue in public debate globally for a number of reasons. From the global business point of view, the collapse of the South East Asian economies in the mid-1997 and the dramatic collapse of the Fortune 500 companies which were the darlings of the stock market, like
Enron, WorldCom, etc. in 2000 brought out dramatically that while it may be possible for Martinez 2
a company to achieve dramatic and highly satisfying results in the short run in terms of