Legality
Explain why legality is only the first step in behaving ethically, describe management’s role in setting ethical
standards, corporate social responsibility, and distinguish between compliance-based and integrity-based
codes of ethics.
Sample Solution
Legality
Ethic goes beyond obeying laws to include abiding by the moral standards accepted by the society. Ethics reflects people’s proper relationships with another. Legality is more limiting, it refers only to laws written to protect people from fraud, theft, and violence. Managers often set formal ethical standards, but more important are the messages they send through their actions. Management’s tolerance or intolerance of ethical misconduct influences the employee more than written ethics codes do. Therefore, ethics set standards as to what is good or bad in organizational conduct and decision making. It deals with internal values that are a part of corporate culture and shapes decisions concerning social responsibility with respect to the external environment. Compliance-based codes of ethics are concerned with avoiding legal punishment, whereas integrity-based codes of ethics define the organization’s guiding values, create an environment that supports ethically sound behavior, and stress a shared accountability among employees.
