Business ethics Final

A large corporation, as opposed to a formal, public-relations or systems-based small business, is one type of organization whose approach to managing ethics is rather informal and trust-based.

False

According to Crane and Matten, a project dialogue is a stakeholder relationship based on discussion between partners over longer-term issues and the development of overall strategy for organizations, industries or regulatory regimes.

False

According to Crane and Matten, globalization is defined in terms of the territorialization of economic activities and is only relevant for local, small business.

False

According to Crane and Matten, one reasonable definition of sustainability is the capacity of a business to survive over time regardless of its damage to the local communities and the environment.

False

According to Crane and Matten, postmodern ethics has the ultimate recipe for ethical decision-making and the most universal principles for global capitalism.

False

As two of the main Western ethical theories, Utilitarianism is based upon self-interest whereas Egoism entails the Categorical Imperative.

False

Consequentialist ethical perspectives base their moral judgement on the motivations and principles of the actors.

False

Cooperatives are owned and run by their managers and investors.

False

Crane and Matten define feminist ethics as an approach that undermines harmonious social relationships and care for one another, in order to defy male-dominated institutions.

False

Crane and Matten identify four main types of ethical codes, namely, accreditation codes of ethics, legal codes, religious codes, and existential codes of ethics.

False

Crane and Matten's definition of a stakeholder makes it clear that it is impossible to identify a definitive group of relevant stakeholders for any given corporation in any given situation. Nevertheless, a typical representation is possible, as in the traditional model of managerial capitalism, in which the government and the supplier's stakeholder must be included as the best examples.

False

For Crane and Matten, in the culture change approach, the leader's role is one of participation and empowerment in order to foster moral imagination and autonomy on the part of employees, while in the cultural learning approach, the leader's role is to articulate and personify the values and standards to which the organization aspires, and to then inspire and motivate employees to follow their lead.

False

Frederick defines corporate social responsiveness as referring to the capacity of a corporation to deny any responsibility for social issues.

False

ISO 26000 and ISO 14001 are two of the most known international standards on social accounting standard that cover a range of issues in the workplace around key labour rights.

False

In his influential 1970 article, Milton Friedman protested against the notion of corporate responsibility for corporations, only because corporate responsibilities limit a corporation's freedom to choose how to pursue its main task of increasing profits.

False

Insofar as ownership identity is concerned, the Anglo-American model of corporate governance privileges families, foreign investors, and banks

False

Instrumental stakeholder theory is a theory that attempts to explain how firms take into account stakeholder interests.

False

Kohlberg's work has been fully embraced by feminists like Gilligan for its criticisms of gender bias, as it serves to promote egalitarianism in ethical decision-making processes.

False

Locus of control has been generally regarded as the most important factor in exerting influence on ethical decision-making.

False

Since the late 1980s, we have witnessed a growing tendency towards the socialization of many political functions and processes formerly assigned to the private sector, as decisions over employment, lay-offs and relocation are taken by governments and the State.

False

Socially responsible investment is the use of pragmatic, individual, and profit-oriented criteria in the selection and management of investment portfolios and company shares.

False

The Dow Jones Sustainability Index takes a best-in-class approach, meaning that companies must be sustainability leaders in each industry and necessarily better than its peers.

False

There is no evidence of a relationship between rewards/punishments and ethical behavior, as bureaucracy alone accounts for ethical decision-making

False

Werhane sees moral imagination as the blind submission of individuals to the rules of the game, so as to avoid ethical dilemmas.

False

While in Asia the key actors in business ethics are government, trade unions and corporate associations, in North America it is only government that organizes the framework of business.

False

A sex shop might call itself ethical as long as it promotes a label to certify that sex industry workers have not been exploited in the making of labelled products.

True

According to Crane & Matten, the main problems with Utilitarianism are the distribution of utility, subjectivity, limited social acceptability, and problems of quantification.

True

According to Crane and Matten, "Business ethics management is the direct attempt to formally or informally manage ethical issues or problems through specific policies, practices, and programs."

True

According to Crane and Matten, these are all reasons why business ethics is important: Business has greater power and influence in society than ever before; business has the potential to provide a major contribution to our societies; business malpractices have the potential to inflict enormous harm on individuals, communities and the environment.

True

According to John Rawls, justice is achieved when certain tests are met, so that social and economic inequalities are to be arranged insofar as they benefit the least advantaged the most.

True

According to Rawls's first principle of justice, each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all.

True

According to Shankman, two features make agency relations special, namely, the inherent conflict of interest between shareholders and managers, and informational asymmetry between principal and agent.

True

According to Sison, the language of risk assessment has encouraged firms to spell out the risks that firms run by ignoring ethics and has promoted the measuring of risks of unethical behavior in terms of fines, damages and sanctions that courts can impose.

True

Ballwieser and Clemm identify the main problematic aspects of the financial intermediary's job, such as conflict of interest, the size of the financial intermediary firms, and long-term relationships with clients.

True

Bureaucracy is posited to have the following four kinds of negative effect on ethical decision-making: suppression of moral autonomy; instrumental morality; distancing; and denial of moral status.

True

Carroll developed a four-part model of CSR to address the nature of business's social responsibilities, according to which society requires firms to meet their economic and legal responsibilities, expects them to meet their ethical responsibilities, and desires that they meet their philanthropic responsibilities.

True

Corporate governance describes the process by which shareholders seek to ensure that "their" corporation is run according to their intentions. It includes processes of goal definition, supervision, control, and sanctioning.

True

Crane and Matten contend that a corporation can be morally responsible for its actions, because it has agency independent of its members. The main arguments in support of this point center on a corporation's internal decision structure and corporate culture.

True

Crane and Matten define ethical theories as "the rules and principles that determine right and wrong for a given situation."

True

Crane and Matten define the subject of business ethics as "The study of business situations, activities, and decisions where issues of right and wrong are addressed."

True

Crane and Matten identify as key factors in deciding whether a situation should be assigned a moral status: the decision is likely to have significant effects on others; the decision is likely to be characterized by choice, in that alternative courses of action are open; the decision is perceived as ethically relevant by one or more parties.

True

Crane and Matten identify five most important issues (from an ethical perspective) in the globalization of financial markets: governance and control; national security and protectionism; international speculation; unfair competition with developing countries; and (creation of) space for illegal transactions.

True

Crane and Matten identify four general distinctions in reporting companies' own assessments of ethical performance, namely, ethical, environmental, social, and sustainability.

True

Crane and Matten identify issues around corporate governance regimes globally, such as ownership identity, ownership structure, changes in ownership, goals of ownership, who controls the board, and the key stakeholders.

True

Crane and Matten point out that the development of social perspectives on sustainability has tended to trail behind that of the environmental and economic perspectives on sustainability.

True

De George (1999) suggests two extremes in locating a place for ethical theory: while absolutism claims there are eternal, universally applicable moral laws, relativism claims morality is context-dependent and subjective.

True

Donaldson proposes principles for organizations working internationally and needing to address cultural differences when developing their ethical codes, such as: respect for local traditions, respect for core human values, and the belief that context matters when deciding what is right and wrong

True

Given the emerging role for corporations in the administration of civil, social and political rights, Crane and Matten argue that the extended view of corporate citizenship describes the corporate function for governing citizenship rights for individuals.

True

Hofstede suggests that differences in cultural knowledge and beliefs across countries can be explained in terms of five dimensions, namely: individualism/collectivism; power distance; uncertainty avoidance; masculinity/femininity; and long-term/short-term orientation.

True

In order to enhance corporate accountability, corporate social activity and performance should be made more visible to those with a stake in the corporation, as entailed by the term "transparency."

True

In the US, compliance approaches appear to dominate, while in Europe and Asia, the drivers of ethics management have tended to be external and values-based approaches.

True

It is now generally accepted that business responsibility does extend beyond simply making a profit because, among other things, socially responsible companies voluntarily solve the social and environmental problems their activities have caused.

True

Joint venture or alliance is a stakeholder relationship based on formal partnership involving significant mutual commitment to achieve specific goals.

True

Kohlberg identifies six stages of cognitive moral development; two each at the levels of preconventional, conventional, and postconventional development.

True

One of the maxims in Kant's categorical imperative deals with the question of consistency, while the third maxim scrutinizes the element of universality ("Act only so that the will through its maxims could regard itself at the same time as universally lawgiving").

True

Rest developed a four-stage model of ethical decision-making, in which individuals move through a process, namely: recognize a moral issue; make a moral judgement; establish moral intent; engage in moral behaviour.

True

Some of the factors with the greatest influence on individual ethical decision-making are personal values, personal integrity, and moral imagination. Other factors include age and gender, national and cultural characteristics, education and employment, and cognitive moral development.

True

The following sentence fairly describes the relationship between morality, ethics and ethical theory:Ethics rationalizes morality to produce ethical theory that can be applied to any situation.

True

The law can be said to be a definition of the minimum acceptable standards of behavior, with many morally contestable issues not covered by the law. Therefore, business ethics can be said to begin where the law ends.

True

There are numerous ethical issues around executive pay, which Crane and Matten identify as a reason that executive pay touches an ethical chord with the public in many countries, such as the pay differentials between those at the top and those at the bottom appear to be highly inequitable

True