Unethical Behaviour In A Business Case Study

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Throughout this essay I will be arguing if unethical behaviour can make a business fail, this will be done by analysing various case studies such as Ford, Starbucks, Fashion Café and Volkswagen. I will also discuss how corporate social responsibility links in with ethical behaviour.
Unethical behaviour is when a person or a business acts morally wrong and performs something that would be viewed unacceptable by society. Business ethics has been described as ‘the study of business situations, activities, and decisions where issues of right and wrong are addressed’ (Crane & Matten, 2007, p. 5). Harrison has described ethics as ‘virtues such as honesty, integrity, trust and fairness, or may simply be what is acceptable in a particular context or community’ (2014, p. 191). Corporate social responsibility has been referred to ‘as actions that appear to further some social good, beyond the interests of the firm and that which is required by law’ (McWilliams & Siegel, 2001, p. 117), this looks at …show more content…

After calculations Ford had concluded that $200,000 is the cost of a person’s life, which would be cheaper than fixing all vehicles with the design issue. Ford could have decided to not put the Pinto model in the market nevertheless the car was very appealing to consumers and therefore increase their profits. This conclusion was perceived as ethically wrong as Ford had decided to risk people’s lives by putting vehicles on the market which were deemed unsafe if they were hit at an average speed which is perceived as an absence of corporate social responsibility, this is due to society not believing you can put a price on someone’s life. Although Ford did not fail as a business they were effected by a decrease in sales; ‘during the period of the trial, Ford sales declined… [by] 30.6 percent’ (Fisse & Braithwaite, 1983, p.

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