Ethics.

Ah, my favourite topic.

Considering that all the courses I’ve taken so far has some ethics element in it and that’s like 9 courses so far.

Heck, I even had a whole course on Ethics cause I had to take it as a programme requirement.

Mind you, it was an 8 hours class on a Saturday morning!

If it’s up to me, that is definitely unethical depriving us students from our precious sleep to attend an EIGHT hours class on a SATURDAY morning when they knew that we’ve been partying hard the night before *uh-huh*

Oh yea, did I mentioned it was 2 Saturdays for the whole semester?

Glad to say I finished the whole 16 hours and now I’m as ethical as I can be after 16 hours of ethical brainwashing

However,

as much as I hated waking up 730 am on a Saturday, I actually learned some real good stuff  in that class.

The teacher was awesome and was not a bore as I thought she would be.

Since I got an -A in that course, I can actually tell you what ethics is really all about ! yeah right >.<

So yeah,

Is business ethics an Oxymoron?

According to Dictionary.com, Oxymoron is defined as : A rhetorical device in which two seemingly contradictory words are used together for effect: “She is just a poor little rich girl.”

So technically,

Business ethics are supposedly there to provide guidance to business people to make decisions that may result either negatively or positively to their stakeholders.

An example where business ethics can be considered as an oxymoron  ….

A company has a factory in China that uses children as labor. They are being paid a minimum wage with long hours and they are the breadwinner of their family.

Ethically, what the company is doing is wrong. They are depriving the children the opportunity for education and the experience of being a normal child. Mind you, some countries allow child labour.

However, if we look at it in a different perspective, the company is providing jobs for children who have to support their family and they don’t have to resort to illegal ways to make that money.

So what is considered ethical?

To give them jobs so that they can sustain their living or let them beg, stea l and kill to just make a living?

I bet you’re finding it hard to decide. Well, imagine the company. What are they suppose to do? Either way, they have to rely on their ETHICAL conscience to make a decision.

So if we consider that the company provides the kids education and a job at the same time, would that be ethical?

Would that be oxymoron’ish?

I guess. It’s like giving them an opportunity for school and exploiting that action to their advantage.

I mean, who doesn’t like a Corporate company who being so generous to provide free education for those kids?

It looks good on Media right?

It looks perfect for their Publicity and company’s image.

So hell yeah to Business Ethics is an Oxymoron but you know what, it’s inevitable.

We all wanna believe that being ethical is good but there’s always a hidden agenda behind it.

Especially those evil, nasty bigga-millionaire Corporations.

Improving business ethics may be possible though, but it will take a while.

Nowadays everybody wants to cover their “faeces” and they have to do it ETHICALLY. 

It all starts with education. If we’re brainwashed from the start to behave and act ethically, it’s not gonna as hard to face dilemmas in the real world.

we the TEENAGERS, YOUNG ADULTS are the future and in order to generate more ethical people in the world, pregnant mommies must let their fetus listen to ethics preaching tapes instead of those Mozart’ish music that so-called stimulate the baby’s brain.

LOL.

My point is, no doubt ethics are very subjective and situation sensitive. But it will definitely help to improve our decision making and that can always start from day-one in School.

Do you agree?

MeiQ-Rachel