Breaking Ice

When we amalgamate the words ethics and business, we are left with a very important question that many of us fail to ask nowadays, and that question is: do businesses operate ethically? Do organizations treat ethics as an important attribute to their operational behaviour? In some cases, ethics are taken seriously where as in others it is less looked at. In a society that is so heavily dependant on producers, and so interlocked with business operations, we’d think that firms would have already embedded ethical principles to govern their operations in order to protect their consumers, or even their suppliers, from the ever so demanding market that shapes so much of our lives. It is not to suggest that many firms do not act ethically, but it is merely a proposal that we are nevertheless surrounded by unethical organizations. Allegations such as Nike’s use of sweatshops to produce footwear and apparel, have definitely sparked a modern-day movement against unethical business operations. Regardless of Nike’s claims concerning the viability of these statements, the possibility still exists, that with organizations as large as Nike, ethics are lost in expansion due to the increased amount of power that enable us to do what satisfies us, the very power that has consumed mankind throughout history. Greed.