According to Investopedia, Business ethics is the study of appropriate business policies and practices regarding potentially controversial subjects. These include corporate governance, insider trading, bribery, discrimination, social responsibility, and fiduciary responsibilities. The law often guides business ethics. But at other times business ethics provide a basic guideline that businesses can choose to follow to gain public approval. Let us look at several key issues in business ethics, as highlighted by Pragmatic magazine.
Among our prior posts on this topic:
- Perceived Honesty of Professionals
- Avoid Being Scammed
- Countries and Industries Most Affected by Counterfeiting
For YOUR Consideration: Issues in Business Ethics
Recently, Pragmatic magazine published a special ethics issue. Within the issue, these four main articles appear:
- Harnessing the Demon — Artificial Intelligence, Ethics and Product “Ethical and responsible AI development is a top concern for IT decision makers, according to recent research from SnapLogic. Indeed, among the U.S. and UK IT professionals surveyed, 94 percent said they believe that more attention needs to be paid to corporate responsibility and ethics in AI development.”
- It’s All in Your Head — The Effect of Cognitive Bias on Our Decisions and Our Products “In a social science experiment, when surgeons explained to patients that a needed operation had a 90-percent five-year survival rate, 82 percent of patients chose to have the operation. When told there was a 10-percent likelihood of death within five years post-surgery, only 54 percent of patients opted for the operation. The odds of survival never changed. It was always 90 percent. Yet, the percent of people who chose to go forward with surgery shifted dramatically. Depending on how risk was explained, interpreted, and processed. The way data were presented changed how people reacted.”
- The Legal and Ethical Guardrails for Sound Competitive Intelligence “Practicing CI collection and analysis requires awareness of the limitations to acquiring and using information that may live in a gray zone. When not fully in the public domain. But not a corporate secret, either. It requires great care to understand what information may be legally collected. As well as how to collect data ethically.”
- Identifying Ethical Practices in Pricing “Pricing. Ethics. Two words rarely heard together. Ethics involves being fair. Pricing seeks to capture as much value from your buyer as possible. Therefore, what could possibly be ethical about pricing?”
Click the cover to access the full 44-page report.
