Code Of Business Ethics, Ethics & Compliance Program

At the Opus College of Business we believe that the purpose of business – any business – is to advance the common good by thinking critically, acting wisely and working skillfully in whatever capacity you serve. Having considered the potential positive and negative consequences of an action to the actor himself, it has been concluded that an action that has no consequences for any other party is not within the scope of ethics to evaluate. Because sales has been based on getting products sold and using product data as the main vehicle (Tell me who among you has never assumed that because your product is terrific that buyers will know how to buy it…. once you explain it, present it, advertise it, and pitch it brilliantly??), ethics have often been ignored. The argument is that if morality is universal, it cannot be that business ethics is not universal.

Business ethics, according to the literature has been entrenched with the philosophical details of Ethics (Trevino ; Nelson, 1999). Hsieh (2004) says that, even if we concede that firms do not have social obligations, individuals have them, and the best way for many individuals to discharge them is through the activities of their firms (see also McMahon 2013). Ethics is defined as a branch of philosophy, which is explained in detail in the previous post.

Primarily, ethics is concerned with the consequences of future actions, as a method to evaluate whether an action that has not yet occurred should be undertaken. Social concern and environment are not going to be the concern and to limit the movement of business. The difference between business and nonprofit organizations would seem to be the generation of profit (a non-profit being, by its very name, and organization that does not generate profit). The concept of good and bad, right and wrong that are applied in the local business must be applied in the international business too.

In a previous post , I considered the ethics of objects, and arrived at the conclusion that ethics cannot correctly be applied to objects, in that an object is not inherently right or wrong, good or evil, except in its use. But what’s important, here, from a business point of view, is to see the way all of this plays out within what has been structured, intentionally, as an adversarial system. For example, many businesses are now feeling a social responsibility to cut back on their pollution in the environment.

I. A corporate organization exists” only if (1) there exists certain human individuals who are in certain circumstances and relationships, and (2) our linguistic and social conventions lay down that when those kinds of individuals exists in those kinds of circumstances and relationships, they shall count as a corporate organization. The responsibility for the consequences is often shared between these two roles, though there is some argument over the degree to which responsibility applies. Another reason that business ethics are important is the relationship they have to investment.