دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی بازنمایی در اخلاق تجاری طی سال های 1992 تا 2017 - امرالد 2017

Introduction

The emergence of Business Ethics in Australia was as a result of the Financial Crash and the debacle of the latter years of the 1980s that surrounded it. When the smoke had cleared and the damage was evident to all right across the Australian community, it became apparent that many of the senior figures of corporate Australia had been bereft of ethical principles in the ways that they had conducted their business affairs and many had violated the laws of the land. Milton-Smith (1995, p. 683) believed that before the crash in Australia: “High profile entrepreneurs became folk heroes and, one suspects, the most influential business role models for the community. When the bubble finally burst and the crash came, it soon became clear how corrupt and leaderless the Australian system had become ... In the wake of corporate collapses, ... many questions have been raised about the integrity of business and government leaders.” The former heroes of the Australian business world were now pariahs, with a number of them being incarcerated in gaols and or fleeing judgement to areas of the world that did not have an extradition arrangement with Australia.

Conclusion

Thirty years ago, Sir Adrian Cadbury (1987, p. 73) summed up the fact that we as citizens of democracies have a role to play in setting the standards by which businesses are allowed to operate when he wrote, “Business has to take account of its responsibilities to society in coming to its decisions, but society has to accept its responsibilities for setting the standards against which those decisions are made. How then did society punish Volkswagen for their deceit over the diesel emissions control scandal of 2015? By the end of 2016, we had made them the world’s top selling brand surpassing Toyota [Tovey, 2017]: what can one say?

We need to move towards a Business Ethics version of ‘caveat venditor’, where business universally takes responsibility for its products and services and accepts responsibility for its actions rather than in many cases plays a ‘catch me if you can’ game. This change is the paradigm shift that we need and must demand of our business leaders if we are to move forward into a marketplace where Business Ethics is just not afforded lip service, but is an accepted moré of doing business and is just second nature to all when making a business decision. Executives should “act ethically not out of the fear of being caught when doing wrong. Rather, they should embrace ethical behaviour in business because of the freedom, self-confirmation, and success that it brings” (Thomas et al., 2004, p.64).