Can Business Jeopardize Human Life?
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Can Business be Ethical? Philosophers, as well as many others, disagree about the purpose of a business in society. Since Business is related to the one of the many activities of humans, it is based on the relationship between people, regulated by rules written and not written. Although as some people think that one of the main goal of the human beings involved in this kind of activity is the profit maximization, there is an opinion that words business and ethics can Ă²ĂâĂĹĄcoexistĂ²ĂâĂĹ and not contradict each other. However, as mentioned above, there are some opposite ideas supported by several world-wide known scientists. Sharing an idea of Ethical Pluralism (something between Ethical Absolutism and Ethical Relativism), Crane and Matten practiced an Ă²Ăâ?oxymoronĂ²Ăâ⢠approach to the notion of Business Ethics. According to their concept, since business ignores any kind of ethical considerations, words Ă²Ăâ?businessĂ²Ăâ⢠and Ă²Ăâ?ethicsĂ²Ăâ⢠contradict each other. For instance some even determine business as something like game which eliminates any moral principles. Famous scientist Milton Freedman supporting Ă²Ăâ?oxymoronĂ²Ăâ⢠approaches also thinks that the only moral responsibility of the business is profit maximization and that only the actions of particular individuals can be the subject for moral assessment. Developing a Shareholder Theory, Freedman asserts that regulation of moral issues is States (GovernmentĂ²Ăââ˘s) business, which should play the role of so called Ă²Ăâ?watch dogĂ²Ăââ˘.
As we could see all the above mentioned arguments mainly lead to the idea of the businessĂ²Ăâ⢠isolation from social duties, whilst one may give many opposing arguments showing that in reality business is, or at list should be, responsible for moral issues. First of all, despite the fact that often decisions are made in organizations by group of people in a collective manner