Business Ethics

Mike Madarasz

The majority of the material we learn in school is cut and dry.  There is a right and wrong way to put together a spread sheet and no one is going to try to argue that.  I’m now finding myself in the middle of one of the more subjective classes I have come across: Business Ethics. 

If you’re like me, the first thing that comes to mind when you think of “Business Ethics” is a classic scene from “Billy Madison”.  Eric failed miserably to define business ethics in the movie, and in reality he is not the only one that struggles with this.  People’s definitions of what is right and wrong are always going to vary.  What some people may see as a shrewd business maneuver others may see as crossing a moral boundary. 

Obviously there are extreme cases where no one is going to argue that the offender is in the right (See Enron).  But take a case where a corporation cuts into shareholder profits by making a charitable donation.  There may not be a right or wrong answer in existence to that question but there are certainly going to be an infinite number of opinions.

I’ll take away a familiarity with the issues in business ethics from this class, which is all one can really expect.  I don’t expect to instantly know what is necessarily ethical or not in business.  I don’t think that answer lies in this class nor do I suspect the answer lies in “The Puppy Who Lost His Way”…