Describe the differences between legality, morality, social responsibility and ethics. (500-700 Words)

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Differences between legality, morality, social responsibility, and ethics

When one thinks of ethics, what crosses the mind is carrying out what is right. Parboteeah & Cullen (2013) defined ethics as what the society perceives as wrong or right. For example, some may view abortion as wrong and others as right. From the business perspective, business ethics are the standards and principles which guide the business. Organizations normally prepare conduct codes to control business practices besides protect the shareholders, employees, and the company at large. It is for instance, unethical to discriminate and harass the workers and expose them to poor working conditions, accept bribes, mislead the customers about product prices or advertisements. A company can pay fines and penalties if sued by a complainant.

Morality almost shares similarity with ethics. Like ethics, morality tries to distinguish between what is right and wrong. Morality also implies moral philosophy. Ethics is the same as “moral philosophy”. Moral philosophy examines the action courses which must be observed to become happy (Brooks, 2011). The key variation between morality and ethics is that ethics are the legitimate aspect of morals. Ethics is a philosophy component which assesses human behavior, people obligations, and what is good for life. It includes debates on professional conduct as well as the ethical theories development (Parboteeah & Cullen, 2013). Examples of ethical theories are virtue ethics (character or virtues), deontology (duty and principles), utilitarianism (end benefit maximization), care ethics, consequential, and non-consequential.

Ethics is thus, used to defend, justify, criticize, and comment moral concepts and to answer morality questions. Philosophy targets vital ideologies of a subject. Business ethics is referred to as an applied philosophy because it bases on actual issues. Ethics are the standards of wrong and right which shows what must be done with regards to obligations, rights, virtues, fairness, or benefits to society (Abyad, 2014). Morality has a wider use unlike ethics. Rational morality develops the decision dilemma, particular circumstances for moral principles and welfare rights.

The legal standards are focused on written law whereas ethics standards are focused on wrongs and rights (Tsahuridu, 2015). The people are guided by laws and any breakage attracts fines and penalties. All organizations are governed by legal responsibilities. Alternatively, something can be legal but unethical. For example, avoiding tax is legal but unethical.

Law establishes the minimum standards whereas ethics establishes the maximum standards. Moreover, ethics evoke our thinking and feeling while the law does not inform what must be done with respect to decisions and dilemmas (Tsahuridu, 2015). It is therefore, prudent to state that ethics start where the law ends.

Social responsibility refers to how a company can make an impact on its stakeholders. The stakeholders include customers (want safe products), government (interested in tax paying), employees (job security and equal pay), shareholders (want dividends), suppliers (pay goods supplied on credit), society (offer donations and scholarships), creditors (pay principal plus interest on loan) to mention a few. Social responsibility is seen as a competitive edge over competitors, building trust with employees and customers and raising brand awareness. Carroll’s model explain social responsibility from the dimensions of philanthropy (being a good citizen-extend resources to society), ethics (duty to perform what is fair and right), legal (obeying the law), and economic (focusing on profitability) aspects (Carroll, Brown & Buchholtz, 2016). This is an implication that social responsibility can be defined in terms of legality and ethics. Lee & Kotler (2013) viewed social responsibility as an ethic theory, in which a person is responsive for satisfying their duty and individual actions must benefit the entire society. Therefore, balance must be made between society and environment welfare and economic growth to attain social responsibility. Social responsibility theory is therefore, focused on ethics, whereby the actions and decisions must be validated ethically before continuing. Decisions are socially irresponsive if they harm the environment or society.

References

Abyad, A. (2014). Morality, ethics and business. Middle East Journal of Business, 9(1), 41-46.

Brooks, T. (2011). Ethics and moral philosophy. Leiden: Brill.

Carroll, A., Brown, J., & Buchholtz, A. (2016). Business & society: Ethics, sustainability & stakeholder management. Boston: Cengage Learning.

Lee, N., & Kotler, P. (2013). Corporate social responsibility: Doing the most good for your company and your cause. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley.

Parboteeah, P., & Cullen, J. (2013). Business ethics. New York, N.Y.: Routledge.

Tsahuridu, E. (2015, April 01). Why ethics and law are not the same thing. Retrieved from https://www.intheblack.com/articles/2015/04/01/why-ethics-and-law-are-not-the-same-thing