Service Management, Student Workbook: An Integrated Approach to Supply Chain Management and Operations

6. Ethical Challenges in Service Management

6.7. Summary of the Chapter

This chapter discussed the topic of ethics in business and pointed out that ethical violations occur in all types of organizations with undesirable effects on society and economic life. It started with a list of a sample of some well-known examples of unethical behavior by people from all segments of the society. Two meanings of ethics are given: 1.) as a field of philosophical study of morality; and 2.) the practice of moral philosophy in an area of human activity. We adopted a definition of ethics as “avoidance of doing any harm to people or the environment.”

In section 6.3 some compelling evidence from the National Business Ethics Survey (NBES) was presented. NBES indicated ...