They tend to focus on profitability and these days the only important groups of people associated with corporations are shareholders. In other words, employees and customers are a means to an end, not an end in themselves. If there is a moral obligation on individuals to do the right thing, then the same applies to groups of people. Organisations are groups of people, yet the corporate world often seems to disregard community values when it comes to meeting performance criteria. If you as a manager cannot analyse the ethical dimension of decisions and problems, your ability to diagnose problems will be diminished and your ability to manage will be decimated.
Ethics is an integral part of mainstream management.
The ethical dimension of business places additional responsibilities on the business sector for its actions and decision-making processes. Many professional people rely on the market place to provide the incentives and the drivers for ethical behaviour in the corporate world. Unfortunately, there is little evidence of this working. If the corporate world had been ethical to date, there would be ample signs of ethical outcomes - in our communities, in our business culture, in the interaction between business and community. As we move towards the 21st century, what we have is a legacy of greed and excess.