Ethical Dilemmas Between Outsourcing And Costing Techniques Essay

ETHICAL DILEMMAS BETWEEN OUTSOURCING AND COSTING TECHNIQUES

Companies in today’s economy face many hardships in trying to remain profitable and competitive. Competitors are constantly on the quest to find new and advanced technology in order to remain ahead of their competitors and many times will stop at nothing to find it.   Business ethics has come to the forefront in recent years as many companies have violated both legal and ethical barriers.   Names such as Enron, Worldcom, Adelphia, and Tyco bring to mind the increases in unethical business behavior.   According to a study performed by Rich Keller (2006) According to the study, the number 1 answer from the 1,100 respondents to the question, Factors Most Likely to Cause People to Compromise Ethical Standards was Pressure to meet unrealistic business objectives/deadlines.   The second answer was, "a desire to further one's career" and in at number three, "desire to protect one's livelihood."

According to Louis E. Lataiff   (2004) business ethics is about making business decisions that factor in ones own morality and sense of responsibility to all stakeholders. Albert Schweitzer had it right when he wrote 54 years ago: "A man is truly ethical when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives." Lataiff believes that some of the attributing factors leading to unethical behavior may be the quality of public education, the weakening of the family, and the greed of the 1990’s.  

What are the pressures facing today’s senior managers running America’s public companies?   One key variable that did not exist in the past is the concentration of stock ownership in the hands of institutions. Lataiff (2004) says forty years ago, only 10 percent of the publicly traded stock in the United States was held by institutions like pension funds, mutual funds and others. Today, fully two-thirds of the country's public stock is owned by institutions.   In l968,...