Reason for Ethics

Abstract

Recognizing the importance of ethics in industry today, the relevant strategy literature offers several anecdotal and prescriptive narratives to strengthen certain ethical concepts. The National Business Ethics Survey (NBES) shows that employees have lost faith in management’s ethics. Industry has anethical crisis of massive proportion, and because of this, companies like Enron toppled, taking both thelivelihood and life savings of their employees. Corporate culture is engulfed with greed with noreasonable check and balance. Currently, ethical rules and standards appear to be a “management only” club. To change this aspect in the industry will require the education of employees. As employees are promoted or are required to make ethical decisions, the basis of the decisions will come from ethics; therefore, ethical training is required. Companies avoid ethics training because of concerns that ethically trained employees will undoubtedly raise questions about specific company policies and actions.