Business Ethics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 1

Business Ethics - Essay Example Business ethics requires the view of all business activities through the moral values lens to determine their acceptability in the society. For smooth business operations, all business actors must understand various issues such as the personal aspects of business including family, sex, marriage and friendship, individual rights, and the moral values ascribed by society within which the business operate. This paper entails discussion of chapters covered between week 4 and 8 and identification of different sources of information with information relevant to the readings. â€Å"It’s Not My Problem†: The Concept of Responsibility (Chapter 8) The concept of responsibility is applied in business in different ways in which every actor in the business world has a role to play. The different forms of responsibilities in the business field include consumer responsibility, corporate responsibility and shareholder responsibility. The view of these responsibilities through the busin ess ethics lens converts them into moral responsibilities and prima facie obligations. In this case, all business actors are obliged to ensure fulfillment of such responsibilities in orders for the business undertakings to have constructive ends or positive impact on the society. Lange and Washburn (2012) have explored the meaning irresponsible behavior in the business world to divert attention from what corporate social responsibility implies, to what business actors do that is against the expectation of responsible behavior. The information covered by the two authors closely relates to information covered in this chapter in which much emphasis has been put on the different responsibilities and the misunderstanding of the responsibility concept in business. According to Lange and Washburn (2012), business responsibility is deeply rooted in the external expectations and the perception of the people experiencing the business activities. The survival and success of a business organiza tion or venture greatly depends on the widespread external perception as to whether the organization acts in socially responsible manner and the ability to meet external expectations. Nevertheless, it is important to understand that the responsibility concept in business does not imply going against self-interests in the business venture but the need to strike a balance between self-interests and societal interests. The greatest dilemma in business ethics revolves around the conflict of responsibilities, where individual’s power may be limited by external expectations or responsibilities. Social Responsibility and the Stakeholder (Chapter 9) Social responsibility in the business world refers to the different roles that businesses and actors in the business world have by virtue of operating within the society. The concept of corporate social responsibility encompasses the social concerns of stakeholders and the economic interests of business owners and shareholders. The corpor ate world and the society directly depend on each other, where the society cannot function in absence of economic and social roles of corporations while at the same time corporations cannot exist without the society. The stakeholder approach in business social responsibilities ensures that business owners commit to serve broader interests, in addition to the business economic and

Current Knowledge in Spatial Thinking in Geography Essay

Current Knowledge in Spatial Thinking in Geography - Essay Example Going by Eliot’s depiction, it is worthwhile to note that intellectual knowledge extrapolates far much beyond observational information or simple sensory. In the field of geography, this extension is well displayed partly in the various forms of representation. Such models become critical in summarizing, analyzing and interpretation to unpack spatial existence and relational traits (Bednarz & Lee, 2011). Towards the late 20th century, there has been a significant deviation in the nature of geographic knowledge. In its history as a discipline, geographic knowledge has been declarative, thus focusing on collection and representation of the physical and human occurrences based on existence. During this period, there has been a change from the inventory dominated practice. The new dispensation sought the creation of knowledge through the emphasis on cognitive demands. Such demands sought to address the questions as to why and how in addition to what and where tags that initially i nterrogated. Consequently, the accumulation of geographic knowledge has changed to item transformation, feature and distribution matching in real-time as well as item manipulation. Such a shift has enabled the solution of tasks such as understanding spatial co-linearity either in negative or positive orientations. Moreover, the logical, inductive and deductive inference has allowed for the recognition of geographic associations. This new way of reasoning and thinking, in turn, called for the development of new data, new representation methods, new modes of spatial analysis and interpretation. More importantly, the new thinking and reasoning required that geographers must consider multiple disciplines. Traditionally, the discipline of geography has provided numerous general education courses. Physical geography introduces students to systems of the earth including anthropogenic and physical factors that shape the earth. On the other hand, human geography provides an insight into the patterns of human activities in a range of scales. However, few of such general education aspects emphasize quantitative solving of problems and technology. Therefore, it is critical for geographers to inculcate aspects of spatial literacy and thinking in institutions of learning (Bednarz & Lee, 2011). According to Goodchild (2007), spatial literacy is the ability to capture and communicate knowledge in the form of a graphical representation and understanding, recognizing and interpreting patterns. With this regard, he points out that geography is not merely a list of places in the world. The value of geography can only be achieved by organizing and discovering information. Additionally, its worth as a discipline can be realized by comprehending such basic information as scale and spatial resolution. As pointed out in National Research Council (NRC) report, Learning to Think Spatially, it is paramount to fully equip next generation of students with spatial literacy so as to work and live in the 21st century. Ultimately, spatial thinking is an integral part of the success of the students. Living beings and their immediate surroundings are situated in space. Human-environment interactions must be comprehended in terms of locations, shapes, directions, distances, and patterns (NRC, 2006).