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Are business ethics or profits more important?

This Debate has 18 articles on the Ethics side and 7 articles on the Profits side. Click here to see all the articles rated and ranked by Helium members.

Ethics

Profits

When you talk about "importance", you are getting into the realm of values, versus practice. Of course, people will argue that practice is the manifestation of values, but the fact remains that we like to talk about what we "value", even if we choose to take other actions or pursue other systems of beliefs in our daily live. Much also has to do with your personal philosophy. We talk in this world about "doing the right thing" or following the "Golden Rule", but at the same time personal wealth is highly valued, at least in the western world. Democracy actually means capitalism, which for many people means as much profit as possible. If people need to adopt an attitude of "moral flexibility" in order to reach certain profit levels, they may go down that road. Here are a few specific thoughts on whether business ethics or profit is more important in today's society.

ETHICAL BEHAVIOR

Again, one has to have a reason to pursue ethical behavior. For some people that is religious beliefs. For others it is just an ingrained philosophy of human compassion and caring. What is crucial for business ethics is to articulate why they exist. It is one thing for an organization to define their ethical standards. However, it is quite another to define why they wrote them in the first place. In the absence of reason, people start to set principles aside because other desires are more powerful and more tangible. Do I want to do the "right thing", or do I want to get a big bonus so I can buy that nice car that I deserve?

PROFIT MARGIN

In some ways we use profit in this country as an excuse to set vague ethical principles aside. We like to use phrases like "I have to feed my family" or "it isn't personal, it is just business". Or, we shift the ethics to the organization and say, "we have a responsibility to our shareholders". That takes the decision-making away from the individual and puts it in the hands of a nameless, faceless entity of stockholders. When you are working to appease another group, ethics can be set aside because the outside group has become the ethical barometer. Since profit is easy to understand, then people gravitate towards that goal, rather than trying to understand the vague philosophies of ethical constructs.

Overall, I would like to think that business ethics are more important in society, but I have seen too many people that "talk a good game" about ethics and then put profit first. Again, what we say and what we do can be different, but ultimately our actions determine who we are, despite the values that come out of our mouth.