Abstract
Nike exploited children to make their products: this is an unethical behavior. Nowadays, the business environment is extremely competitive and companies want to be more and more profitable. Employees in both small and large business can face difficult ethical dilemmas in South Africa as well as internationally.
According to the 2002 Transparency International corruption perception index listed Africa as the most corrupt continent.
To compete internationally and to have a better reputation, South Africa knows that every business, regardless of the size needs to provide knowledge and resources to help employees act ethically.
First of all, we have to define the terms ethics and ethical behavior. "Ethic concerns itself with what is good or right in human interaction" (Rossouw, 2002), ethics involves the study of moral issues and choices. This is one of the thousands of definitions of a field.
Jacobus and Lazenby define an ethical behavior as principles of conduct that distinguish between the wrong and the right behavior.
Even if this subject has been for long time a philosophical topic, the field of business ethics has been growing in recent years as both an academic course of study in business schools across the globe and as social behavior.
According to Goosen in her article, businesses have much to gain if they have a reputation of corporate governance based on ethical behavior. Indeed, they will be able to attract investors from whom good corporate governance is a major consideration as well as new customers and will be a preferred employer for people that perceive themselves as having the capacity to thrive in an ethical environment. That is why South African companies decided to improve ethical behavior in their organization.
