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ethicsveryard projects > business organization management > ethics |
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To start with, you can think of Ethics very simply as
the study of value.
As one of the Foundations of Business, it provides a philosophy of value, which is complementary to the science of value provided by Economics, and helps to motivate a deeper and more reflective study of business. |
what's good about business
ethics (pdf) ethics notions (html) reading list (html) |
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What's good about businessveryard projects > business organization management > ethics > what's good about business |
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An appreciation of ethics provides a motive for the study of business. Business is a Good Thing - it is a social system to produce Value - so it helps to have a well-founded understanding of value. |
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We want to discriminate Better and Worse business organizations -- so it helps to have a well-founded understanding of Better and Worse. |
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An appreciation of ethics allows us to balance economic/financial notions of value with other notions of value, including humanistic/existential ones. |
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Business might not always be a Good Thing. Some people are critical of individual (corrupt) organizations, or of particular styles of organizations. (Edward Heath, Conservative Prime Minister in the 1970s, once described some business activities as "the unacceptable face of capitalism".) Some people extend such criticisms to the whole of business. An appreciation of ethics allows you to engage positively with such arguments. |
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Business excellenceveryard projects > business organization management > ethics > business excellence |
In these works, business excellence is typically associated with a factor X. Good businesses have X, poor businesses lack X.
Sometimes X is a measurable characteristic. Sometimes X is an observable mechanism. Sometimes X is a collection of stuff. Often the authors fail to distinguish clearly between the mechanism and its supposed outcome.
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