Ethics and Values in Business

Question: Evaluate the morality of the large profit margins command by the high-end brands from the following perspectives. Answer: Introduction In a civic world, the importance of the ethical outcome of any activity cannot be ignored. In modern world of business, the large scale companies are also integrating the ethical values into their organizational strategies as those are important for ensuring sustainable profit margin Lal, 2015). Ethics and the moral ideas help the organizations in a multiplicity of ways (creating brand popularity, maintaining legal boundaries and many more). Evaluation of morality of the high-end brands with three eminent ethical theories is given bellow: Utilitarian ethics: As mentioned by Gustafson (2013), the Utilitarian ethics, ideated by Jeremy Bentham, states that result of an action is the real measure of whether it is good or bad. The action whose result increases happiness and diminishes pain (for the greatest number of people) is good and produces utility. As mentioned by Lal (2015), the modern day high-end brands are concentrating on the ethical approaches of operation like obtaining employee-oriented policies, transparency in the business procedure and reasonable pricing as they are being helpful in ensuring grater good. By ensuring a good quality of life to the employees the organizations ensure better standard of living to a large number of people and it helps them in ensuring sustainable supply of satisfied labours. As in the case of Oliver Cabell, the operational approaches of the company like reasonable pricing is helping the customers obtain the best products at the best price which in turn provides brand popularity and substantial profit margin for the company. Thus, the modern day companies are applying the utilitarian view of morality in their operation. Kantian ethics: However, as mentioned by Ward (2013), the Kantian ethics supports the Deontological theory of ethics, i.e. producing a favourable outcome cannot be the parameter of the righteousness of an action. Humans have a duty to act morally and doing what is right and avoiding what is wrong. As mentioned by Kant, morality is a matter of following absolute rules which will not appeal to religious considerations but to reason. Thus, Kantian ethics supports the importance of maintaining the legal frameworks for the sake of doing an ethically acceptable business. The modern day organizations follow the legal frameworks regarding the employee benefits, fair trading policy, transparency, corporate governance with a good will and the idea of doing the right thing as well. Oliver Cabells strategy of providing the best quality products and the reasonable price was maintained with the idea of Doing the right thing. Thus, the companies follow the legal boundaries and reap the consequence of a sustainable business. Virtue ethics: Finally with the ideology of the Virtue ethics, the integration of moral behaviour within the business operation can be examined in a whole different way. As mentioned by Aristotle, doing the right thing is not enough; to be ethically right, one needs to have correct disposition, emotion and motivation to do the right thing (Sison, 2014). Hence, being legally correct cannot be ideate as the most ethical move by a company. The management needs to obtain the moral strategies coupled with the personal or moral virtues like truthfulness and others. This theory depicts that it is not enough for the companies to be legally right, but they need to exercise the personal virtues as those are the prerequisites for them to do an ethically right business (Lal, 2015). References: Gustafson, A. (2013). In defense of a utilitarian business ethic. Business and Society Review, 118(3), 325-360. Lal, K. (2015). Effects of Ethical Behaviour on Corporate Performance. CLEAR International Journal of Research in Management, Sciences Technology, 5(10). Sison, A. J. G. (2014). Happiness and Virtue Ethics in Business. Cambridge University Press. Ward, I. (2013). Kantianism, postmodernism and critical legal thought (Vol. 31). Springer Science Business Media.