Egoism and relativism Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Egoism and relativism - Assignment Example as certainty associated with it because it promotes that individuals should take actions that provide the highest degree of happiness to oneself and the individual should try to avoid actions and decisions that result in unhappiness. The element of certainty exists because an individual can easily be sure about the elements and the outcomes that will make him or her happy and unhappy and thus can easily make decisions. For example: as an individual I may lie to another individual if I perceive that in a given situation lying will result in higher benefits to me as compared to costs. The main weakness associated with egoism is that it ignores the fact that other individuals within a society may end up being impacted negatively if an individual only makes decisions based on his/her self-interest. This means that egoism disregards the idea that those actions are ethical that result in benefiting the overall society and not just a few individuals within the society. For example: a stock exchange agent may lie to its clients that investing in a certain share will benefit them when actually it may result in losses. This means that the agent is hurting others by lying and only benefiting himself in terms of commission he earns from selling certain stocks. The theory of relativism states that actions as well as decisions that may be ethical for a particular society are not necessarily ethical for another society or group (Birsch 18). Relativists are of the position that no actions and decisions are universally ethical or unethical and vary in compliance from one society to another. One of the major strengths of relativism is that it promotes tolerance between different groups and well as different members of these groups (Birsch 28). The theory holds that one cannot simply reject the values of another society or culture if those values are conflicting with values of people from their own society. This in turns helps in ensuring that members from different societies

Business Ethics Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 1

Business Ethics - Case Study Example Pollution problems in Ohio valley are rooted in the year 1950 with the emerging of the Union Carbide which led to the building of several industries in the mountainous regions around the Ohio valley. Pollution problems started in 1951 (Hartley 1993. p. 31). Soot bad odour and ash were being emitted to the atmosphere causing massive of pollution. The neighboring population around the industrial area experienced the most suffering since most settlement were built on the valley. People were infected with respiratory disease among other dangerous illnesses. The Union carbine frustrated the people plead for the pollution content to be reduced. The National Air Pollution Control Administration tried to intervene in the situation by requesting the area to be inspected but the result of this was an ignorant response from the government. This portrays the level of corruption and unethical business environment in Ohio. Companies only focused on the profits and their business outcomes while neg lected the human environment in which the business directly affects. Business ethics advocate for healthy business environments which involves the relationship between the human and business environment. A healthy business environment is supposed to consider the economic, social and political environment. These are the entities that determine the prosperity of a business be it in the private or public sector. A good business is determined by the level of positive co-relation between these entity factors. Union carbine displays negative business ethics since it does not consider the help of the people living in the surrounding environment. In 1971, environmental reforms were structured which included the implementation of a number of pollution management measures. Union Carbide shut down one boiler and some workers lost their jobs as a result. This was considered as a form of retaliation to due to the new environmental reforms. This is unethical as it shows lack of consideration by t he company. Lockheed Corporation: Overseas Bribery Gone Rampant Corruption is one of the major attributes of unethical business. Corruption takes course in form of bribery of illegal tender allocation. Robert F. Hartley gives an overview of corruption cases and how they affect business ethics. Lockheed Corporation had tried to venture into several businesses but none of them turned out to be successful (Hartley 1993. p. 83). The company invested heavily in a number of businesses which all failed in the process before making any slight positive outcomes. Due to this, the company decided to switch to unethical form of business operation. Lockheed Corporation decided to extend their sales overseas in order to obtain more profits. This forced the company to make payoff in order to obtain contracts. Therefore it engaged in commodity trading with countries like Netherlands, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Italy, Iran and Spain. These resulted in the resignation of the company’s chairman. The reason to this was that the company went bankrupt under his leadership. Unethical business practices show a sense of unprofessionalism. The company board forced the manager to resign because he displayed unprofessional leadership skills at the time the company needed to progress and settle of its previous deficits. This also led to the creation of foreign corruption act in 1977. Robert F. Hartley