Business Ethics and Religion

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Business ethics is certain behavior that a business follows when dealing with people in the business world. Many businesses have made a bad reputation for themselves because they are only interested in making money, an example of this would be the Enron case. Many of today’s top corporations have been fined a lot of money for unethical decisions. Ethical behavior in business improves the well-being of the individuals because it promotes things such as generosity, and compassion for each other and their customers.

Ethical behavior among businesses can be enhanced when there are conferences between CEO’s of the organization and their employees talking about the standards of the organization. One way to find out if there is an understanding of ethical behavior is to ask employees if they understand the core values that make up the business. If they do not know them employees may unknowingly be practicing unethical behaviors that the company may not tolerate (2007, Nov 9).

One out of every three major corporations offers some kind of ethical training which helps their employees to work through difficult situations. For example these programs will help employees to better understand and handle situations when they are confronted with a situation involving unethical behavior being exhibited by another employee. If companies do not have any of these programs they can expect unethical decisions to be made by their employees (White).

In recent years companies like Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and Wal-Mart have hired chaplains of many religions to work for the company. Members of the God Squad as

they are called will visit employees in the hospital, respond to personal problems, and help employees to cope with every day struggles.

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Today top executives are incorporating mysticism with their management, and many corporations have daily prayer groups to start off the day. Other business executives are meeting for prayer breakfasts and spiritual conferences where they pertain the bible to drawing up business plans and solutions. According to the Fellowship for Companies for Christ International “there are 10,000 Bible prayer groups in workplaces that meet regularly (Conlin).” A few years ago there was only one conference on spirituality and the workplace, but today there are around 30 conferences nationwide.

A research study completed by McKinsey and Company shows that companies in Australia who have their employees practice spiritual techniques find that productivity improves and also the turnover for the company is lessened (Conlin). “A Spiritual Audit of Corporate America, published in October by Jossey-Bass, found that employees who work for organizations they consider to be spiritual are less fearful, and less likely to compromise their values, and more able to throw themselves into their jobs”(Conlin).

In the United States today a wide range of people believe that religion plays a positive role in the workplace. Most of these people say that religion helps them to have a positive outlook when at work and helps them to make better decisions about different things at the workplace.

I can personally relate to these people. I work at a golf course as a bagboy, I clean golf clubs and so on and we get tips, it’s kind of like being a server where we pretty much have to rely on tips to make money except we split the tips at the end of the day.

Every once and awhile there is this extremely rich guy that comes to play golf and he’ll give you $100 to get his clubs out of his car. There were a couple of times when I really could have used

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the extra money and wanted to keep the $100 bill but I knew I couldn’t do it, because as a Christian I knew I would be letting God down and my faith is more important than that money. So I was working with a new kid this summer and this guy came up to play golf and I figured I would let the new kid go out and his clubs. He came back with his clubs and I said to him did he give you anything, thinking he would excitedly say yea a $100 bill. The kid said no and I kind of had a funny feeling that he did get the tip from him but when he realized how much it was decided to keep it and not share it with the rest of us. I found out from the guy who happens to be friends with our family that he did give the kid a $100. I did not tell my boss about the situation because I knew he would get fired and I didn’t