Current State of Business Ethics in the 21st Century Term Paper

business ethics in the 21st century. Business ethics are under increased scrutiny today, and companies like Enron and WorldCom redefine corporate business ethics, lack of ethics, and their punishments when greed prevails over ethics. Business ethics today may be in question in many areas, but the Enron scandal and others have caused people to take a closer look at ethics in business and create new ways to thrive in business without suspending business ethics.

To say that every business in America was ethically corrupt after the Enron scandal would be as far from the truth as saying that every business in America straightened up their ethics after the Enron scandal broke. There will always be unethical businesses in America, and there will always be highly ethical businesses. However, the evidence suggests that in order for businesses to survive, thrive, and grow, they must inherently be corrupt. One ethics expert states that trickles down into education, subtly continuing the trend toward unethical business practices that eventually become accepted and widely used. He writes, "This pervasive view [ ...] that successful businesses are by their very nature corrupt is itself corrupting to students in business-ethics classes" (Berlau & Spun, 2002). This view that business ethics classes are teaching a cynical view of business is held by many in the educational and business world, and the continued reliance on "cooked" books may indeed indicate that generations of business majors have somehow come to believe that ethics and business simply do not go together, if businesses want to survive.

However, business ethics do seem to be more important than they were even a few years ago. For example, Arthur Anderson, the old, established accounting firm that helped Enron fabricate numbers and financial reports, could not survive the scandal, and closed its doors because its' clients lost their faith in the organization.

What may be most interesting about business ethics is that most people will agree they are paramount to good business and a good life, but most people will not stand up for them when they invade the workplace. For example,….....