ETHICS AND MAKING A BUSINESS SUCCESSFUL
A successful business depends on the trust of various parties—employees, managers, executives, customers, suppliers, and even competitors. Six ethical terms form the foundation of trust upon which ethical business practice is built:
Ethics
Values
Morals
Integrity
Character
Laws
Ethics
Ethics refers to a set of rules that describes acceptable conduct in society. Ethics serve as a guide to moral daily living and helps us judge whether our behavior can be justified.
Ethics refers to society’s sense of the right way of living our daily lives. It does this by establishing rules, principles, and values on which we can base our conduct. The concepts most directly associated with ethics are truth, honesty, fairness, and equity.
While ethics is a societal concern, it is of critical importance to the professions that serve society. Because professionals such as physicians, attorneys, engineers, and property and facility managers provide services that affect our welfare, they develop professional codes of ethics that establish professional standards for behavior.
Examples of the types of standards found in professional codes of ethics include:
An attorney or physician maintaining client-patient confidentiality
An accountant not using client information for personal