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Synthesis on Ethical Foundations of an Enterprise

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Synthesis on Ethical Foundations Of An Enterprise
By: Rufino A. Santos III
For many years people in "business" have had the reputation of needing to be ruthless in order to succeed. We've all heard remarks and jokes that perpetuate such stereotypes and caricatures, to the effect that there is no such thing as an honest person in business.
Such comments would not be made unless there were at least some truths behind them on many occasions. We all know examples of people in business who have done things we consider dishonest, repugnant and socially irresponsible, all for the sake of personal monetary or material gain and, in many cases, ‘got away with it’ as far as the law is concerned.
According to Charles Francis Adams “Failure seems to be regarded as the one unpardonable crime, success as the all redeeming virtue, the acquisition of wealth as the single worthy aim of life. The hair-raising revelations of skullduggery and grandscale thievery merely incite others to surpass them by yet bolder outrages and more corrupt organisations”. These were words written over a hundred years ago not by a management guru but an ordinary person who have concretely experienced such trends. In fact, so many revelations are reported that people who wish to be honest in the business world may be tempted to believe that they, too, must be sneaky, deceitful or dishonest in order to pay their way and make a decent profit.
Various gurus have consciously defined ethical conduct in which one view is from Michael Cook, chairman Deloitte Haskins & Sells. Cook states that anything which is legal is ethical – legal standards are appropriate standards to measure ethical conduct. At the opposite extreme, the view is that anytime you're in doubt, anytime your conscience gnaws at you, you're probably engaging in unethical conduct. The true standard is likely to be somewhere in between.

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