Ethics are ethics. They apply equally to businesses and their relationships with shareholders, customers and employees, to individuals and their relationships with family, friends and co-workers, and to society and its relationships with its members and with other societies.
Ethics is about honesty, fairness and respect. But according to Jeremy Campbell, author of the book The Liar's Tale, A History of Falsehood, deception is a part of nature. In fact, certain species might be extinct today if they depended on truthfulness to survive.
We humans have a choice. We can choose to be unethical, or we can choose to be honest, fair and respectful. And we learn about these choices early. Last year, a survey in the U.K. showed that almost half of British children aged 13 to 15 think that underage drinking, vandalism and using buses and subways without paying are just minor offences.
Unethical behavior can promise many things: survival, a solution to conflict or punishment, the opportunity to exploit or flatter, and self-enrichment. In business, its impact on both the innocent and the guilty and on social trust is profound.
Bayles, Kultgen, Sullivan, and MacIntyre are among many scholars whose work provides a means to assess the place of the professions and the difficulties attendant to their role. All four have highlighted the importance of the nexus between professions and society. Their works thus point to a place for journalistic coverage that draws attention to the interaction of professions and society and to a need to assess that coverage.
Bayles noted the growth in the number of professions and their membership during the 20th century and pointed to the increasing importance of professions in the functioning of society. He noted that professionals make many more decisions in society than they once did and that power has shifted........
