Research Paper on:
A Case Study in Business Ethics

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
scandals--Enron, Martha Stewart--there have also been smaller stories that tell of whistle blowers and people who have acted ethically. In some circumstances, the results of decisions or choices are not  black and white and there are in fact many gray areas, particularly when number crunching is involved. At the same time, life strategists and modern ethicists often point to rules  and standards that seem applicable in most situations. Kants categorical imperative for example suggests that rules must be widely applied. For instance, if one says that lying is always wrong,  then one cannot justify a lie due to circumstance. At the same time, the other side of the coin is that ethics is more complex than that. In corporate America  today, the issue is very complicated. First, it seems safe to say that America is a corporate society premised on situational rather than absolute, ethics (Loeb, 2001). Because of  this, one can see that it is not so difficult to implement an ethical program. There are no right and wrong answers. Rather, the floor is open for discussion and  this makes things easier for all concerned. Loeb suggests that businesses use the same model as the Supreme Court uses when it defines pornography, which is that they do not  know what it is, but they know it when they see it (11). Similarly, it is not out of the realm of possibility that one can say that ethics is  not all that clear cut and there are shades of gray. Nevertheless, it is still important for companies to try to do the right thing. Even if one adopts a  broad ethical paradigm, such considerations may be evaluated on a case by case basis. Although ethics is hard to define, and many companies take things one problem at a