Business Ethics Case

Religion Beliefs and Business Ethics

HONG KONG SHUE YAN UNIVERSITY

BUS 480 BUSINESS ETHICS

Name: Lo Shuk Ying

Student id: 113081

Section: 1

Total word counts: 3015 words

Abstract

Business environment is treated as a competitive arena nowadays. More unethical events are happened in the business arena. Therefore, more people are concerning the problem of business ethics. Some people believe that religion is playing an important role in business decision making. In this paper, we will discuss three major religion in the world and investigate how their religious belief affect the business ethics. These three major religion are Catholicism, Buddhism and Islam. In the following, we will also discuss what the business ethics is these three religion is suggesting. Moreover, is religious belief is the only factors affecting the business ethics?

        Keywords: business ethics, religion, Catholicism, Buddhism, Islam

Religion Beliefs and Business Ethics

Introduction

There is more news about unethical product or business, for example, gutter oil, poisoned milk powder. More and more people are going to discuss the issue of business ethics. Nowadays, the business decisions not only focus on a legal dimension, an operational dimension, an accounting dimension, a marketing dimension, a financial dimension and psychological dimension. The business decision should also focus on ethical dimension (Morris, 2004). The reason of more corporate to put focus on business ethics is mainly because of the corporations realized ethics is good for business. The company should invest in being ethical (Chamia, Cosimano & Fullenkamp, 2002). Business ethics also have different meanings. Firstly, it might mean using ethics as a business strategy to improve or enhance the reputation and also the performance of the business. Besides, it might also mean that the behavior of management is it ethical, also for the adoption of the code of ethics in order to influence the activities of its employee. Furthermore, business ethics might also refer to the commitment in business, for example honesty, trustworthiness, integrity and truthfulness (Haddad, 2007). However, what is affecting the management to have business ethics? Some people mentioned the religiosity will also affect the business ethics. Most of the people in the world also contain at least one of the religious. Religiosity means that a person has the faith in god and this faith is greatly affecting the conducts and beliefs of individuals (Patwardhan, Keith & Vitell, 2012). People always think that religion is very important to their lives because of religion offers personal network and support. Besides, some people may divided religion into intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic means that the internal commitment to the religion and to serve the common good. And for the extrinsic religiosity is to gain the social approval and use it as a further business agenda. That means religion motivated people to use their religion extrinsically and also live their religion intrinsically motivated (Patwardhan, Keith & Vitell, 2012). Some paper also argued the business leader should secularize their belief. It is because some people may also argued that the religious of the business leader will always affect the decision making especially when those decisions are related to ethical dilemmas. A paper also mentioned that people agreed religion was very important in making daily decisions. And religion is the important predictor of ethical attitudes (Comegys, 2010).  This shows religion really have the relationship with the business decision making. That means somehow affecting the business ethics. In the following, this paper will use three different religion to illustrate the relationship between business ethics and religion. The three different religion are Catholicism, Buddhism and Muslim.

                Catholicism

Catholicism is one of the three major religion in the world. The reasons of Catholicism can be the three major religion in the world is Catholicism is the national religion of some European countries. Catholicism have around 1.7 billion followers which is the 17% of the world population. The material objects of Catholic tradition’s engagement is rooted in the Gospels. In the early 1st century AD, there already have the legend of Jesus. They believe Jesus has the power to change water into wine, and also can multiplied bread and fishes (Miller, 2015). Following the ten themes of Catholicism, there are some principles which affect the Catholicism follower to be an ethical person.