The Evolution of Business Ethics

In a three- to five- page paper, excluding title page and references page, complete the following:

• Summarize the development of business ethics over the past several decades, including the rise of social issues in business.
• Describe the major changes and events that gave rise to the present focus on business ethics.
• Provide examples of how these changes impact current business philosophies and reporting practices.
• In your conclusion, discuss how your values and principles relate to the evolution of business ethics.

Your paper should be formatted in accordance with APA guidelines as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center and reference two or more scholarly sources, in addition to the textbook.

This week a variety of scholarly journals specific to business ethics were presented as recommended resources, which you may choose to utilize in your research. You may also draw information from the Ashford University Library, the textbook, peer-reviewed journals, or industry reports to support your work and in-text citations.

One thing nice about this course is that you will find your background reading page rather short… but there will still be a respectable amount of reading to do. The reason for this is because will be using a text book for your case assignments. Well, it’s actually more of a narrative of the history of Lockheed Martin’s (LM) ethics program than an actual text book.

The first part of the text provides a general history of the company and also provides the setting for the creation of the company’s ethics program. Military contractors like LM tend to find themselves in the unique position of manufacturing weapons of war which they sell for a profit. But those weapons also provide a military superiority that helps to protect our troops in the field.

With this said, please read pages 1-48 for this module of the following book in our e-library.

Terris, Daniel. (2005) Ethics at Work: Creating Virtue at an American Corporation. Brandeis University Press. Waltham, MA. Retrieved from ProQuest ebrary.

For your SLP assignment you will be asked to spend some time reviewing an article on stakeholder management. Stakeholder management is foundational to the practice of business ethics. This is because typically when a company player does something unethical, stakeholders are the ones impacted. As always, some stakeholders may benefit and others may lose, but stakeholders will always be involved. Balancing stakeholder concerns is subsequently an important aspect of ethical decision making. This article provides a good overview of stakeholder management.