Business ethics

Typical issues in business ethics

While hardly exhaustive, some typical issues addressed in business ethics include:

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• accounting and financial standards, and "creative accounting"
• advertising deception
• black market sales
• bribery and kickbacks
• business intelligence and industrial espionage
• political contributions
• competition versus cooperation
• corporate governance, including hostile take-overs, fiduciary responsibility, and shareholder rights issues
• corporate crime, including insider trading, price fixing, and price discrimination
• competitive disinformation
• discrimination, affirmative action, and sexual harassment;
• employee issues, such as rights, duties, illicit drug testing, key employee raiding, and professional conduct
• environmental issues, animal rights (e.g., in agriculture), and related social concerns
• Labor issues such as union strikes and union busting
• Marketing, sales, and negotiation techniques
• Product issues such as patent and copyright infringement, planned obsolescence, product liability and product defects