Why it is important that business people study business ethics ?

Many people think that business ethics is an abstract concept, and is only based on kindness. They do not understand exactly what it is and how it brings benefits. That is main reason why anyone has been doing in business environment has to learn business ethics.

First, business environment is very complex with many issues. Knowledge we have been learning in school, at home or in daily society is sometimes not enough to making an ethical decision in business context. Our ethical issues evaluating is affected by religion, or traditional culture.

In addition, although having not been working for any company yet, I think that business ethics is very important both in Vietnam and to the world of business. When a company attaches its benefits to customers’ one, customers have tendency to return to that company. Besides, all genuine employees want to work in an honest and fair environment. If the managers can guarantee this, all of them become willing work for their company. The investors also feel safer when investing to an ethical organization because they think that their benefits are always respected.

Vietnam is a developing country with changing from centralized economy to marketing one. Some people usually suppose that “Business world is a battlefield”. Therefore, misconduct situation has been increasing nowadays. Some recently examples are scandal soya sauce with 3MCPD content which is higher than standard; Vedan, a manufacturing glutamate company, has caused serious pollution for Thi Vai river. Those companies clearly did not consider ethical issues, so losing reputation is a certainly result.

On the world, scandal melamine milk in China is also a black point of misconduct. This problem has caused many bad consequences such as losing national reputation, miserable farmers, and unstable employees.