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BUSINESS ETHICS
Introduction
Business ethics or corporate ethics is a form of moral ethics that examines the
conduct of people and individuals in a business set up (Weiss, 2014). These norms are the
key guidelines to the way things are done in individual and communal businesses, and it
helps in improving the relationship of the business with its stakeholders. The core
purpose of any company is to maximize shareholder returns, and this is only made
possible by having the business impress its customers effectively and treat them fairly
such that the net sales remain at a high level (Ferrell & Fraedrich, 2015). It is common to
find various ethical issues arising in a business, situations where the management has to
decide on the suitability or morality of actions that will be taken in the business. During
such ethical dilemmas, the officials are expected to make the best decision that is aimed
at winning the affection of the customers (Weiss, 2014). Taking the example of ford, the
car producing company that was faced with an ethical dilemma due to the production of
defective products, the decision made in such a scenario, if proper business ethics are
adhered to, could make the company maintain its high clientele, of which the opposite
also applies.
Case analysis
One of the known business ethics cases of the international companies is the ford
pinto case, in which ford’s design of the Pinto’s fuel tank is defective, in a way that it
makes the Pinto to be highly susceptible to fire accident. Rear-end collisions for the
Pinto, whether minor or major leads to ultimate accidents, making it very unsafe for the
Pinto users. The moral action for Ford in this case is to repair the design to make it
suitable for every vehicle, but apparently this would be very expensive as it would cause