BUSINESS ETHICS, BETWEEN THE THEORETICAL CONCEPTS AND THE ROMANIAN FIRMS' PRACTICES

Abstract

Business ethics reflects the philosophy of business, of which one aim is to determine the fundamental purposes of a company. If a company's purpose is to maximize shareholder returns, then sacrificing profits to other concerns is a violation of its fiduciary responsibility. Ethical issues include the rights and duties between a company and its employees, suppliers, customers and neighbors, its fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders. Issues concerning relations between different companies include hostile take-overs and industrial espionage. Related issues include corporate governance; corporate social entrepreneurship; political contributions; the marketing of corporations' ethics policies. Business ethics issues are complex, due to the extensive consequences, to the many alternatives and to the conflicting results, uncertainties and the personal implications. Managers make decisions and develop actions affecting the others; if the effects are adverse, if the others are suffering, then we are dealing with an ethical issue that requires a certain level of an ethical analysis, in addition to the usual economic analysis. But what is more important above all is the recognition that every business decision or action that may affect the others. In the business Romanian environment the unethical behavior is not just an exception.