Business owners often face difficult dilemmas, such as whether to cut corners on quality to meet a deadline or whether to lay off workers to enhance profits. A current ethical debate concerns the use of extremely low – wage foreign workers.

The intense business pressures, may not always allow you the luxury of much time for reflection, and the high stakes may tempt you to compromise your ideals. How will you respond? No doubt, you already have a well – developed ethical outlook. Nevertheless, by considering various approaches to ethical decision making, you may be better able to make the right choice when the need arises.

The subject of business ethics is complex. Fair minded people sometimes have significant differences of opinion regarding what constitutes ethical behavior and how ethical decisions should be made. This article discusses two approaches that business owners can use to consider ethical questions. The method   you prefer may not suit everyone. Hopefully, by considering the alternatives, you will   be able to make decisions that are right for you.

MORAL RIGHTS

The moral rights approach concerns itself with moral principles, regardless of the consequences. Under   this   view, some actions are simply considered to be right or wrong. From this standpoint, if paying extremely low wages is immoral, your desire to meet the competition and keep your business afloat is not a sufficient justification. Under this view, you should close down your business if you cannot operate it by paying your workers a ‘living wage’, regardless of the actions of your competitors.

UNIVERSALISM

This approach has two steps. First, you determine whether a particular action should apply to all people under all circumstances. Next, you determine whether you would be willing to have someone else apply the rule to you.