Business Ethics Organizations Key Terms

Set your moral compass to align with business ethics organizations by understanding key terms

By Tara McClendon, Freelance Writer/Editor Tara McClendon

When it comes to working with business ethics organizations, key terms can help you understand the primary goals. In some cases, an organization may focus its services on helping a company incorporate social capitalism. Others might focus on defining values, establishing a moral compass or creating virtue. Understanding these terms helps you determine whether or not an organization will direct your company in the way you want it to go.

Values

Many business ethics organizations focus their services around values. In its most basic form, a value is something that causes an emotional response in a person, business or social group. Business ethics companies want to create positive common values among people in a business relationship.
Try: Pavlina provides a list of 374 values a person can have. It also provides tools to help you learn more about the term.

Virtue

Business ethics organizations make virtue a priority. Virtue entails acting in a responsible way that upholds your idea of morals in any given situation. Philosophical experts tend to define virtue in different ways, but most rely on Aristotle's philosophy, which defines virtue as a state of character.
Try: The Center for Business Ethics at Loyola Marymount University hosts "Why Virtue," a downloadable PDF guide that expands upon this business ethnic key term. 5min provides a video that discusses virtue, as defined by Aristotle, in today's terms.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate citizenship

Corporate social responsibility, also known as corporate citizenship, requires a business to align its activities to the expectations of its stakeholders. According to business ethics organizations, these expectations should include social, economic and environmental qualities.
Try: Starbucks provides information on how it is working to become a CSR company. Along with its mission statement, the company provides links to other information pertaining to its CSR efforts.

Moral compass

The term moral compass indicates the ways in which a person's morals affect his or her decisions. Business ethics organizations strive to help business owners and leaders develop a moral compass that promotes trust. Some organizations go so far as to define the principles-such as integrity, responsibility, forgiveness and compassion-a business leader needs to incorporate into his or her life in order to have the correct moral compass.
Try: MoralCompass.com provides tools to help you evaluate your moral compass. These tools include an overview of the business ethics organization key term and a free self-assessment test.

Stakeholders

When it comes to business ethics, many organizations define this differently from common definitions. In terms of business ethics, a stakeholder becomes any person with financial relationship to the company. This includes not only stockholders, but also employees and their families and other investors.
Try: Distance Consulting provides an abstract analyzing the Stockholder Scorecard. It includes stakeholders from a variety of different perspectives and relationships as they pertain to a company.

Moral capitalism

Moral capitalism, known as global capitalism by some business ethic organizations, involves restructuring the principles of a business to create a desire for all people in the business to act in a moral, or virtuous, way. It calls on owners, CEOs and other management to set an example of putting the good of the company above the desire to increase their own bank account at the expense of the company or its employees or shareholders.
Try: Hellenic Communication Service considers whether or not moral capitalism is possible in today's market. Caux Round Table, an organization dedicated to moral capitalism, defines the principles it feels should become a global standard used to define global capitalism.