Overview

Business essentially consists of economic relationships concerned with the exchange of goods and services. But managers of businesses function within a more complex cultural environment. Key elements within that environment, as Trompenaars (1998; see Chapter 21) wrote, are what cultures consider to be right and wrong and good and bad issues at the heart of ethics. This chapter sets out to discuss approaches to considering ethical issues and behaviour in business. It does not attempt to state what 'good' or 'ethical' behaviour is. This would lead into the realms of philosophy, which would pose such questions as who and what determines what is right and wrong. Instead, this chapter sets out a way of evaluating an enterprise's or an individual's behaviour in business so that the reader can arrive at his or her own judgements.

Ethical issues are of concern to all managers within an enterprise but particularly to the most senior managers because it is they who create and control the whole environment in which their enterprise functions. At the same time ethical issues are of particular concern to human resource managers because many of the roles of human resource managers are concerned with ensuring that an enterprise functions ethically through the recruitment of the right people, training them in the norms and values of the employer and, particularly, motivating employees in such a way that the employer's ethical position is not compromised.

The definition of ethical behaviour is very difficult, since it depends upon each individual's...