Business Ethics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 6

Business Ethics - Essay Example One of the ethical issues that emerge occasionally in a business environment is treatment of lost and found properties. This essay seeks to evaluate a case study in which a student finds a lost iPod and is faced with the decision of whether to keep it or not. The essence of this essay is to identify the contentious issues that must be observed while settling a personal dispute. The issue of keeping a lost and found property has garnered a lot of ethical analysis with the controversy arising of whether such a person should be equated with a thief. However, business ethics are grounded on the ability of a person to assess whether an action is good or bad depending on the results of the action. Any action that has a negative effect to another person or to the business is considered wrong and punishable. In such a scenario, the student who found the iPod, their friend and the judicial member all have must use critical decision making approach to arrive to the right course of action. The student who found the iPod has a choice to either keep the gadget it to the legal body of the school. Their friends have a role to advise the student on the ethical course of action to take when they are consulted. The best strategy to make a worthwhile decision is to weigh the effects results of keeping the gadget. In corporate ethics, the best course of action is one that does not hurt any individual in the organizational environment (Hartman, 2008). Handling of lost property in an organization is an ethical issue that can attract a legal action or even punishment. In an organization, if a person finds a lost item, they have a role to find the owner or submit the property to the legal committee of the institution. According to organizational ethics, taking a lost property is a legal issue that is equivalent to stealing. The legal issues that arise from an act of stealing include loss of business trust, lack of transparency and criminal guilt (Hartman, 2008). On religious grounds, if one finds lost property, it is ethical to put an effort to establish the rightful owner, rather than keeping it. In this view, if the student keeps the property, they defy the moral responsibility that is expected in an organization and hence can be accused of stealing. If the student opts to keep the found items and is eventually reported for theft, the student representative in the judicial board members has a role to provide a ruling on the case. To do this, the judicial member would require getting the material facts associated with the dispute. For instance, the cost value of the object, in order to determine whether the gadget was valueless when found. Any valueless object voluntarily abandoned is regarded as trash and if a person who finds it is not guilty of theft (Hartman, 2008). If the item is found to have a value and it is proven that it was abandoned involuntarily, then the student is guilty of stealing for not submitting the iPod to the judicial body. In this scenar io, the student can only defend themselves if there is evidence that he or she submitted the lost item to the legal body and efforts to establish the owner were futile. Other stakeholders in this case would include the friend of student who kept the device as well as the rightful owner The student representative in the legal affairs has several decisions to take in settling the dispute in this case. The first option would be to return