Myth of amoral business

497 Words2 Pages
Business is amoral i.e. business has nothing to do with ethics. In business moral considerations are not needed. Business and ethics are incongruous. The myth is created by the following misconceptions about ethics: 1. The general conception that ethics is an ideal system, which is all very noble in theory but no good in practice. 2. Ethics is inapplicable to the real world or to one’s professional life. Because ethics is a system of short and simple rules like ‘Do not lie’, ‘Do not kill’ and ‘Do not steal’, this prompts that ethics is not suited to complexities of life. 3. Some people think that morality is a system of nasty puritanical prohibitions. 4. When someone says values are eroding moral standards are declining, it is readily understood that it is about certain personal value system. It is not concerned about corporations bribing government official, or making maximum personal profit in business without considering consumer. Accordingly to the University of Kansas ethicist Richard T. De George, a myth that often clouded business thinking is that business and ethics do not mix. People in business are concerned with profits, with producing goods and services, with buying and selling. The economic system is thought by some to be value –free. They may not be immoral, but they are amoral that is not concerned with morals. Moralizing is out of place in business. Indeed, even good acts are to be praised not in moral terms but only in the cost/benefit language of “good business”. The myth of amoral business has a corollary that makes ethical paralysis almost inevitable. It is the dog-cat-dog rhetoric of the Darwinian Jungle ‘survival of the fittest’. Those who say that morality and business do not mix or are antithetical or business is amoral are at a wrong side. Because if everyone in business buyers, sellers, producers, management, workers
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