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The concept of business ethics arises from the tensions that exist between the different stakeholders of business. One of the central ethical questions of business is "In whose interests should firms be managed?" (Moriarty, 2016). There are different perspectives to this issue, usually perspectives of different stakeholders. For example, Milton Friedman's famous view that business exists to increase its profits is, more or less, adopting a view that only shareholders matter as stakeholders, and that managers have a sole responsibility to the interests of the shareholders, and further that the interests of shareholders are narrowly defined as increasing wealth. But there are other perspectives as well, and the stakeholder approach reasonably looks at these other interests – of employees, of customers, of communities and of the environment. Where these interests are unaligned, there is often tension and from this tension arises ethical dilemma.
Thus, many businesses create guidelines for ethical conduct within their company. They do so for a variety of reasons. In some cases, it is merely covering of backsides, but in other cases, codes of ethics and ethical guidelines exist to legitimately outline what behaviors are and are not accepted when someone acts as...
These codes must be centrally defined because different people have different ethical standards, and different countries do as well. This gives rise to multinational corporations seeking to strike a balance between what can be very different ethical norms in different countries (i.e. with respect to bribery, for example).
A code of ethics is usually written as a defensive document. When the company provides this guidance to its employees, it does so in order to prevent particular behaviors. In that way, it does not really provide competitive advantage. More specifically, it negates what would otherwise be a disadvantage – the risks posed by specific unethical behaviors.
A code of ethics can have some benefits, such as in recruiting. Whether this is a competitive advantage or not depends on who is being recruited – I am not sure there is an established correlation between one's attraction to firms with strong ethical codes and one's performance on the job. The reality is that high and low performers alike wield different ethical compasses. But it is reasonable that a company could recruit, at the very least, the type of person less likely to commit an unethical act that damages the company. In other…
References
Moriarty, J. (2016). Business ethics. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved March13, 2018 from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-business/
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