Organizational Design & Business Ethics: A Literature Review

Abstract
A review of the current literature regarding business ethics was conducted analyzing scholarly peer-reviewed articles about business ethics and their relation to leadership, managerial decision making, corporate social responsibility and overall corporate structure. Increased corporate scandals and the discovery of a rise in unethical business practices have thrown the topic of business ethics into the spotlight. Organizations are expected by their stakeholders to implement strong ethics within their corporate structure and culture. This expectation could be accomplished through strong ethical leadership, formal structures and regulations that place emphasis …show more content…

Increased corporate scandals and the discovery of a rise in unethical business practices have thrown the topic of business ethics into the spotlight. Over the past few decades many successful, prominent companies have collapsed due to corporate scandals, which resulted not only in the loss of jobs of many employees, but also led to large financial losses of thousands of shareholders. This cascading effect of unethical behavior by company executives led to increased expectations from all stakeholders of an organization. Stakeholders, who include employees, investors, shareholders, and customers, expect organizations to do more than just maximize the bottom line profit; organizational management is expected to accomplish this goal both legally and ethically, while also implementing some sort of program or policy that seeks to benefit society or the environment at large. Companies are expected to implement ethics within their organizational structure and culture. This expectation could be accomplished through strong ethical leadership, formal structures, and regulations that place emphasis on ethics, and by making a commitment to corporate social responsibility. Following the implemented ethical procedures and guidelines will help organizations overcome the various ethical dilemmas and challenges, allowing the business to build a strong ethical foundation that will ultimately benefit the company through increased customer and employee satisfaction, which could