The Possibility of an Ethical Business World

Brown, Sharie A. "Hall Monitors in the Workplace." Annual Editions: Business Ethics Winter 2003, Vol. 18, No. 16: 72-74.
O'Toole, James. "Advice from Aristotle on Business Ethics." Annual Editions: Business Ethics Winter 2005, Vol. 18, No. 3: 9-10.
Singer, Andrew. "The Perils of Doing the Right Thing." Annual Editions: Business Ethics October 2000, Vol. 18, No. 32: 140-144.
Vogl, A.J. "Does it Pay to be Good?" Annual Editions: Business Ethics January 2003, Vol. 18, No. 22: 92-97.

Many government and corporate policies have been created in order to keep businesses acting ethically. Officials believe that by informing business leaders and employees about "how to act ethically" it can prevent scandalous unethical behavior from occurring. This informative approach has been around for many years, as written in an article by James O'Toole. He writes that even Aristotle had put forth this information way before big business was created. I personally do not believe an informative approach is strong enough to prevent this behavior. One must also look at the cost that a business must incur to inform all of its employees of how to act ethically. There are many classes to be taken, and it also may become difficult to force employees to take this information seriously. Another idea proposed was to create systems for those who have noticed unethical behavior to report it. Officials believed this would help to stop unethically behavior, and also help to scare people away from acting unethically. Although this approach sounds great, there are some holes found that kind of prevent it from working correctly. First, it may become almost impossible to get people to come forth. Most people will not "tattle" on those they must continue to work with everyday. Some may even quit their jobs after they blow the whistle, worried that one day someone they told on might find out. (Whistleblower refers to those telling on people who acted unethically.) Although ideas are getting better on how to instill values and morals into business people, at this current time it is impossible to have an ethical business world.