Business Ethics and Corporate Governance, Second Edition

INFLUENCES ON ETHICAL DECISION MAKING

There are three major influences that have an impact on employees’ decision making in business—their personal moral standards, their workplace ethics and culture, and the nature of the issue concerned.

Businesspersons and industrialists often face tough ethical dilemmas, such as whether to use inferior raw materials to cut costs or to lay off workers to increase dividends to shareholders. Moreover, they may also face the constraint of lack of time to contemplate and reflect on alternative courses of action without compromising their ideals due to the intensity of competitive business pressure. For instance, in India during November-January every year there is an increasing quantity of sales of every conceivable ...