Business Ethics and Corporate Governance, Second Edition

WHY DOES BUSINESS HAVE A NEGATIVE IMAGE?

We have already noted that ‘Competitive pressures, individual greed, and differing cultural contexts generate ethical issues for organizational managers’.¹¹ Further, in almost every organization some people will have the inclination to behave unethically (the ethical egoist)—necessitating systems to ensure that such behaviour is either stopped or detected (after unethical behaviour occurs) and remedied. Business has always been portrayed negatively by media, books, and movies. According to Batstone, ‘less than two percent of Americans rated US companies as excellent Corporate Citizen’ in 2003. When companies do some good, they are hardly highlighted, while any wrongdoing by them is heavily publicized. ...