Why Good corporate governance is a question of ethics?

Answer 1

The phrases "Socially Responsible", "Corporate 'Social Responsibility", a "The Social Responsibility of Business" are at times used as though they were synonymous with business ethics. But this can be misleading if it is taken to imply that business ethics deals exclusively with the relationships between business organizations and what have come to be called their" external constituencies such as customers, suppliers, government agency , community groups and even host countries. For while these relationship define a large and very important sub-domain of business ethics, they do not exhaust the field, there remain equally important "internal constituencies" (employees, stockholders, boards of directors and senior executives) as well as ethical issues that do not lend them- selves to "constituency" or stakeholder analysis. Thus, business ethics is a more embracing field of inquiry than corporate social responsibility, even though it includes the latter. Questions, like moral responsibilities, obligations and virtues in business decision making also form part of ethics e.g. choices and character of persons, the policies and cultures of organization. The subject of business ethics, therefore, is multi-leveled. At the level of the individual ("the ethics and values of business person"), attention is paid to the values by which self-interest and other motives are balanced by concern for fairness, properness, right / wrong and the common good, both within and outside the company. At the level of the organization ("the ethics of a business enterprise"), the focus is on the spoken or unspoken group consciousness that every company has either by design or by default, as it pursues its economic objectives. Finally, at the level of society itself (" the ethics of business system"), business ethics examines the pattern of cultural, political and economic forces that drive individuals and firm's values that define democratic capitalism in a global environment. The ethics of Corporate Governance is therefore; the determination of what is "right", "fair", "proper" and "just" in decisions and actions that affect other people -goes for beyond simple questions of bribery, theft and collusion. It focus on what our relationships are and ought to be - with our employees, our customers, our stock holders, our creditors, our suppliers, our distributors, our neighbors and other members of the community / society in which we operate.