Social And Ethical Responsibilities Of Mangement

Definition of Ethics

As noted in lesson one managers carry out different functions and play different roles in the organisation. By implication managers pursue multiple objectives and multiple sets of priorities. Often managers must juggle goals and priorities and make choices between these goals. The choices they make affect the ability of employees, customers, suppliers, stockholders and anyone with interests in the organisation. Mangers must often decide “who has the right to what and when”. No matter what they do, the actions of managers allocate benefits and detriments to people.

•    Ethics as applied to management refers to the concept of interactive responsibility: who is? who should be? Benefited or harmed by an action. It is also a study of “who has a or should have rights of any kind in the organisation”.

•    Ethics is the discipline dealing with what is good or bad, or what is right or wrong or specifically with moral duty and obligation.

•    Ethics could also be described as the study of how our decisions affect other people or as the study of people’s rights and duties and the rules that people apply in making decisions. In business we cannot avoid ethical issues just like in other areas of our lives.