Free Business Ethics Essay Examples & Topics

Free Business Ethics Essay Examples & Topics

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1,176 samples

What is business ethics? An essay about it can be a task in your class. For that, you need to understand the term and what it implies.

Running a successful business, negotiating a contract, or simply dealing with clients is impossible without understanding and applying business ethics and its practices. It is a study of appropriate policies that companies and employees can use. They are vital in controversial situations that involve corporate governance, fiduciary responsibility, corporate social responsibility, etc.

That’s where the importance of business ethics comes from. For a company to be successful in the modern world, it should implement techniques and practices of business ethics. Customers and clients expect firms to behave appropriately. Operating this way is more than not breaking laws.

Our team came up with some tips that can help you write your business ethics essay. Additionally, you will find topics for different academic papers, and you can check our free samples.

How to Start a Business Ethics Essay

Let’s start with learning the basics of a business ethics essay. Here we will explain how to approach such a type of academic paper.

First of all, you need to see how this essay will differ from other assignments. That’s why we’ve prepared a step-by-step plan for you:

  1. Pick an idea.

As you can imagine, you need to have a solid idea. It does not have to be defined at the very beginning. However, you need to know what direction you want to take. You need to come up with an assumption that you will later develop in your essay.

  1. Research your topic.

The next step in starting your business ethics essay is to research the case carefully. The Internet, non-fiction books, interviews, business journals can become great sources for your paper.

  1. Take notes.

While doing your research, you should always write down key information. It will ensure that you will not miss any vital data and keep track of good thoughts.

  1. Craft a thesis statement.

After you’ve conducted your research, the next step is to explain your message and position. A thesis statement usually appears at the end of your introductory paragraph.

  1. Think of your introduction.

After step number four, when your thesis statement is ready, you can develop your introduction. It has to catch readers’ attention and adequately introduce the topic of your essay. Additionally, think about the way it can be connected with your conclusion.

  1. Outline your essay.

One more step before writing is organizing your text. Like any other academic paper, an ethics essay follows a structure. It consists of an introduction, body, and conclusion. The opening and the closing take about twenty percent of the entire article, and the rest eighty percent is left for the body.

17 Business Ethics Essay Topics

Now that you know how to start your business ethics paper, we’ve prepared a list of seventeen topics for your assignment. They can help you compose a fantastic essay about business ethics or use them to inspire your homework.

The topics are 100% original, so you can freely use them as your own:

  1. Raising the minimum wage for minorities.
  2. Issues with child labor.
  3. Analyzing Uber’s business behaviors.
  4. Is capitalism good or bad today?
  5. How does social responsibility connect with business ethics?
  6. Can moral principles guide business decisions?
  7. Ethical issues in business law.
  8. Advantages and disadvantages of Confucian business ethics.
  9. The role of ethics in purchasing decisions.
  10. Ways to eradicate unfair treatment due to race or religion at a workplace.
  11. Walmart business ethics and ethical standards.
  12. Social media in business ethics.
  13. Ways to reduce business’s environmental impact.
  14. Concept of corporate social responsibility.
  15. CSR trends in 2021.
  16. A balance between profit and CSR.
  17. Ethical dilemmas people face every day at the workplace.

5 Business Ethics Research Paper Topics

We also came up with five high-quality business ethics topics for the research paper. Good luck with your essay and with learning more about business ethics!

  1. List major ethical issues that business faces today.
  2. Kantian approach to business ethics and morality.
  3. How utilitarianism ethics can be used in companies.
  4. The role of ethics in international business.
  5. Applying Aristotle’s virtue ethics to business.

Thank you for reading the article till the end. Do not hesitate to share it with your peers who may need our tips or topics. Now, you can also look at our business ethics essay examples below.

1176 Best Essay Examples on Business Ethics

Is Business Ethics an Oxymoron

Business and ethics are incompatible and that is why business ethics is an oxymoron. Business ethics is an oxymoron because business and ethics are incompatible.
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BP Oil Company Ethical Dilemma

The damages caused by the spill originated from the effects of the oil on the environment and the damaging effects of the cleanup activities.
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Ethics in Tourism and Hospitality Industry Report

The ability to effectively articulate high levels of ethics in tourism and hospitality industry is a key determinant of the capacity for the aforementioned sector to trace its missions, achieve the set goals, objectives and [...]
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Importance of Ethics in Communication Essay

The issue that arises is whether employees make the right decision that would benefit the company or they make the wrong choices that call for the downfall of the company.
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PepsiCo Ethical Issues & Achievements

The firm has established a global code of conduct that generally identifies the main objective of conducting business in the right way as a part of its corporate mechanism aimed at ensuring that customers of [...]
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Business Ethics and Social Responsibility Essay

In this light, this paper discusses the importance of ethics and social responsibility and various practices and theories employed in different organizations. In future, ethics and social responsibility will have a new meaning in the [...]
  • 3.4
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Importance of Ethics in Business

The manager of the North American company has a difficult task because in as much as the decision taken by the company depends on him, he wants to please both parties, that is, the client [...]
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The Ethical Issues of the Mattel Toy Scandal

The reasons for the considerable recalls of products were that the toys manufactured on the facilities based in China were dangerous for children's health due to the lead paint discovered in the toys and the [...]
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Nike Inc.’s Corporate Social Responsibility Project

The following paper aims at analyzing the CSR program of Nike, a publicly traded sportswear company, in order to determine the transparency and effectiveness of social and environmental responsibilities stated in their report.
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Toyota Ethical Issues and Social Responsibility

Another set of the company's stakeholders that affect the ethical code of business in the company is the external environment like customers and the society; there is a level of quality that customers expect from [...]
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Business & Legal Issues: Ford Pinto

To be more precise, the Ford Pinto case will be evaluated from the legal point of view to establish which laws were violated in the process of corporate decision-making that led to the production of [...]
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Adelphia Communications Scandal and Ethical Issues

This is because of the huge sums of money involved, and the suspicious arrangement the Rigas family made with the company that required the company and the Rigas family to be guarantors of each other.
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The Blood bananas: Chiquita In Colombia

Below are discussions on the root cause of the company's choice: whether the company's management had any other choice; what the incumbent management team can do to restore the company's reputation; the role of corporate [...]
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Unethical Business Practices Essay

At the end of the day, the government, employees, investors, competitors, and the customers suffer while the crooks enjoy the fruits of their unethical business practices.
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Emirate Airlines CSR Strategies and Management

The purchasing power of customers in the industry has been reduced after the global economic crisis, and this has forced companies in the industry to apply low cost strategies to reduce prices of the products [...]
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Emirates Airlines CSR Application

The research is motivated by the need to understand the possible gaps in the company's CSR strategies, and hence determine the necessary adjustments that the firm should undertake.
  • Pages: 19
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Business Ethics of the H&M Company

Additionally, all employees should have a written contract in their local language provided to them by H&M, and they should be aware of the terms and conditions.
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Quebec Bridge Collapse and Ethical Issues

Since the commission of inquiry did find out that the change of design was one of the factors that led to the collapse of the bridge, many engineers perceive that Theodore Cooper changed the design [...]
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The Philosophical Approaches to Ethics

The main point of the argument is that philosophical approaches to business ethics provide guidelines for making ethical business decisions, but some of these approaches are controversial and have no support from most moral scholars.
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Key Ethical Issues in Retailing and Distribution

As Barnett et al.observed empirically, there are several self-evident dimensions to ethical consumerism which players in retail and distribution function should comprehensively be aware of, for these dimensions may act in an organized and collective [...]
  • 5
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  • Words: 1173

Goodrich A7D’s Scandal

As already mentioned and also according to the theorist, Goodrich was not morally responsible for the scandal and therefore, he should be excused in the first place.
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Incident at Morales

The purpose of this article is to highlight the ethical issues surrounding the engineering profession. The company's desire to make profits and dominate the market compelled the management to disregard ethics of the engineering profession.
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Corporate Social Responsibility

Like wise if the organization carries out the activities that pollute the environment the people can sue the organization for its harmful activities to the people and the environment.
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  • Words: 2533

Organizational Structures

The rationale for choosing this type of organizational structure for the company 1 is that each of the workers in this company has a specific task to perform depending on the specialization.
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Workplace Ethical Issues Essay

Harassment of the co-workers or clients is one of the major workplace ethical issues that involve violation of the employers' workplace ethics policy.
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Walt Disney Company’s Corporate Social Responsibility

An example of the efforts Walt Disney has implemented in ensuring the sustainability of the environment is that for a period spanning ten years, the Disneyland Resort has tremendously increased the alteration of waste from [...]
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Boldly Go Case Study of Providence Healthcare

Some of the problems she faces include: Lack of ethical leaders and workers in the organization. To resolve the lack of ethical leaders within Providence Healthcare, Walsh needs to lead the organization through ethical leadership.
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Goals of business

The aim of this paper is to critic and analyse the claim that the main goal of businesses is profit maximisation. CSR is the obligation of businesses to offer social, legal and economic support and [...]
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Chapters 2-3 of “The Corporation” by J. Bakan

From this point, social responsibility can be observed with references to the corporations' sponsoring different social events and promoting the environmental initiatives, and the activities of Pfizer and BP corporations can become the examples of [...]
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The Unilever Global Company’s Business Ethics

The company has code of business principles that gives an account of the various ways in which its activities are to be carried out and it ensures that everyone working in the company follows it [...]
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The Nestle Company’s Environmental Sustainability Efforts

What I like about Nestle's environmental sustainability efforts: Nestle's environmental sustainability efforts are concise and clear towards the company's sustainability plans, that is, clear goals and objectives which are time bound. The company's sustainability efforts [...]
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The Ethical Dilemma: Siemens

In relation to the above dilemmas, the bounded bribery applies to the psychological tendency of the conspirators to fulfill selfish interests of self enrichment at the expense of the shareholders' goals and objectives.
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The Benefits of Business for Society

Businesses also contribute to economic growth by spending on research and development, which results in the development of new products and services.
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Unethical Issues at Workplace

The employees will also have a chance to ask any questions or clarification concerning the issues of unethical and ethical practices.
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The National Youth Service Corps Schemes in Nigeria

Agumagu, Adesope and Njoku note that the core objective of the scheme is to instill in the Nigerian youth "the spirit of selfless service to the community, and emphasize the spirit of oneness and brotherhood [...]
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Corporate Social Responsibility: Merck KGaA

First of all, the structure of the company corresponds to the fact that decisions are made regarding the current readiness of the organization to contribute to the community.
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Home Depot: Robert Nardelli

The 40% of his $210 million dollars in his exit package or even the $84 million was for the reason that there was an acceleration vesting in the options as well as the stock awards.
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Corporate Social Responsibility in Apple Inc.

However, Steve Jobs resigned as the CEO of the company in 1985, after he was phased out by directors of the company. The biography of Steve Jobs shows that he was dedicated to improve ethics [...]
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Corporate Social Responsibility Major Aims

Its major aim was to ensure that businesses were behaving ethically as well as contributing to the economic development, but at the same time the business is improving life quality of its employees, their families, [...]
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H. B. Fuller and His Resistol Products Ethical Case

Fuller is not responsible for the overall addiction of street children to glue sniffing, but the company is responsible for neglecting its own contribution to the dissemination of substance abuse.H.B.
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New Balance Company’s Major Issues

The company introduced various incentives that contributed to development of the company, employees and communities but those incentives were not integrated into a particular paradigm.
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Nike Business Code of Ethics

Given that employees of the organization are involved in the corporate business ethical programs of the organization, such programs therefore involves advising the employees of the organizations to be responsible on their behavior towards fellow [...]
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Google and Ethics

The purpose is to show that a company like Google must behave ethically and all the decisions made by managers and other superiors should be guided by the highest morale and respect to the surrounding [...]
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Ethics and Human Resource Management

The staff at the human resource department should always show the importance of ethics in the organization. Therefore, the HRM should know that reward and appraisal systems can be harnessed to promote ethical behavior in [...]
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Business Ethics: Is It Profitable?

Business ethics is a set of professional ethics that tries to inspect ethical problem or the principles of ethics that can emerge in a business organization. Implementation of ethics in a business organization increases costs [...]
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Product Dumping in Third World Countries

Even if there are no rules, regulations or bans in the countries these products are exported to, allowing the sale and export of goods that have been proven to be dangerous are to become complicit [...]
  • Pages: 4
  • Words: 1165

McDonald’s Ethical and Moral Dilemma

Despite his dwelling on the concept of bureaucratic power, Weber says that power is the most important aspect of leadership and the followers should be the only people who grant it to the leaders.
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Human Resource and Events Management

Again, what this means is that HR is in the fortunate position of being able to give the tools and agenda for the administrative team and CEO to entrench events ethic into the brand and [...]
  • Pages: 10
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Moral Development and Ethical Concepts

The two concepts are important in the promotion of ethical culture within the organizations, the organizations' performance and the much needed moral and financial support from the organization's stakeholders and the public in general.
  • Pages: 12
  • Words: 3605

British Airways Ethical System

In light of the resent standoff between the company and its employees there is need to modify the code of ethics especially regarding employees relations.
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  • Words: 1350

Legal and Ethical Issues in International Business

This is an unfavorable situation for foreign companies considering that these are credited with introducing revolutionary technologies, products, and ideas to the host countries, leading to improvement in the quality of life in such countries.
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  • Words: 824

The Norwegian Business Etiquette

Thirdly, the gift card needs to show the contact information of the business, which can be a phone number, email address and the organization's website.
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  • Words: 676

Ethics of Nepotism in Business

Practicing nepotism in an organization from the basic concern is that it brings about the issue of contradiction of the typical customs in employment to hiring and promoting the most qualified and performing candidates for [...]
  • Pages: 9
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Business Ethics: Can a Corporation Have a Conscience?

This explains why the government should use appropriate adjustments and regulations to regulate these corporations. This approach will reduce the inequity associated with capitalism and wealth distribution.
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Ethics of Airlines’ Extra Charge for Obese People

In this regard, he would not have supported the imposition of an extra charge for obese people. This proposal aligns with the principle of equality because it would be unfair to other passengers if obese [...]
  • Pages: 4
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Business Ethics: Enron

Objectives for the research Many scholars of different fields have already researched on the Enron scandal and the bankruptcy of this Corporation, but the prime objective of the writer of this research paper is to [...]
  • 1
  • Pages: 18
  • Words: 4973

Functional Areas of a Business

According to Robbins and Coulter, "managers oversee and coordinate the activities of their employees in order to accomplish the targeted organizational goals".
  • Pages: 4
  • Words: 1128

Discrimination in The Clicks Hair Ad Saga

Clicks and TRESemme were embroiled in a hair ad saga that has led to racial discrimination allegations, and blacks boycotted Clicks and TRESemme brands as a result. The Clicks and the TRESemme brand both experienced [...]
  • Pages: 4
  • Words: 1221

Business Ethics and Child Labour

According to the case, business ethics is the observance of rules and regulations that have been put in place. Child labour is one of the serious ethical issues that businesses have to deal with in [...]
  • Pages: 2
  • Words: 588

Guess Jeans

The discussion examines the experiences of the company's employees and the best managerial strategies to deal with its current ethical issues.
  • 1.5
  • Pages: 4
  • Words: 1229

The Wells Fargo Firm’s Ethical Case Analysis

The scandal referred to unauthorized sales of bank products in the United States, where the bank employees opened accounts for their clients without the consent of the latter.
  • Pages: 10
  • Words: 2800

The Wells Fargo Cross-Selling Scandal Analysis

When analyzing the case of Well Fargo and its consumer abuse and compliance breakdowns, one should note that the company should separate its banking business from the firm's other enterprises.
  • Pages: 1
  • Words: 273

Conflict of Interest

Trying to define the problem of the conflict of interests within the professional of a chemical researcher, the specific examples are going to be considered with the possible ways of solving those situations.
  • Pages: 4
  • Words: 1154

Ethical Behaviour in Workplace

A higher degree of organizational commitment can result in dedicated commitment of the employees', organizational structure and the factors involved in the commitment of the organization.
  • Pages: 3
  • Words: 996

Application of ethical theory

This means that there are four stakeholders; James; the owner of the company, the employees, the council and the residents of the council.
  • Pages: 6
  • Words: 1624

United Airlines: Unethical Incident

In order to get four United personnel to the docking station, the airline made the decision to remove four passengers from the aircraft.
  • Pages: 2
  • Words: 600

AICPA: The Ethics in the Organization

Under Professional competence, a member should have technical qualifications and has the capacity to oversee and assess the quality of work.
  • Pages: 5
  • Words: 1454

Spirituality in the Workplace

Spirituality and organizational performance The introduction of spirituality and virtuous approaches to business management is largely predetermined by the necessity to increase organizational performance, productivity, and revenues.
  • Pages: 9
  • Words: 2495

Cultural Change at Texaco and Financial Crisis

The most important and influential challenge was the opportunity to solve the questions of exclusion and discrimination of the minorities and women from the company's workforce in such high status posts like management.
  • Pages: 3
  • Words: 844

Analysis of a Vacant Position in an Organization

Managers today are looking at new and innovative ways for recruitment and selection of new workers due to the range of complexities involved in the mobility of employees in and out of the organization and [...]
  • Pages: 8
  • Words: 2400

Child Labour: Ethical Aspects of Employment

In spite of its rich history, the question of child labour cannot be answered in a proper way; a number of issues like personal desire, necessity, and living conditions have to be taken into consideration; [...]
  • Pages: 5
  • Words: 1435

Wal-Mart’s Ethical Issues

This paper forms an analysis of the ethical issues raised against or for Wal-Mart Corporation and the potential outcomes of some of the negative or conflicting views about the firm.
  • Pages: 4
  • Words: 1279

Ethical Issues in the International Business

Logically, in order to sustain a good reputation and be successful in the world market, the international companies are urged to establish a code of ethics that would comply not only with the ethical standards [...]
  • Pages: 3
  • Words: 928

Starbucks’ Ethical Accusations

Diversity in the contemporary business world is one of the key factors that contribute to the success of many industry participants.
  • Pages: 5
  • Words: 1435

Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Smartphone’s Security Issue

The exploding smartphones have shown that, although the Samsung Company's status and quality of products were supposed to be at the highest levels, they are not trustworthy from the consumers' point of view.
  • Pages: 4
  • Words: 1110

General Motors Company Ethical Issues

Overall, the basis of this issue is the unwillingness of the management to consider the interests of the main stakeholders who can affect the performance of this corporation.
  • Pages: 4
  • Words: 1114

Ethical Theories and Ethical Business Practices

Among the most common theories of ethics that corporate governance has examined are the utilitarianism theory, the virtue theory, the theory of the common good, the justice theory, and the Kantian theory of ethics.
  • Pages: 11
  • Words: 3108

Counseling in the Workplace

Another issue in the workplace that leads to the increase in stress levels in the employees and the need for professional help is workplace bullying.
  • Pages: 6
  • Words: 1702
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