This article addresses five research questions: What specific behaviors are described in the literature as ethical or unethical? What percentage of business people are believed to be guilty of unethical behavior? What specific unethical behaviors have been observed by bank employees? How serious are the behaviors? Are experiences and attitudes affected by demographics? Conclusions suggest: There are seventeen categories of behavior, and that they are heavily skewed toward internal behaviors. Younger employees have a higher level of ethical consciousness than older (...) employees. The longer one works for a company, the more one may look to job security as a priority; this can lead to rationalizing or overlooking apparently unethical behaviors. More emphasis is needed on internal behaviors with particular attention on the impact that external behaviors have on internal behaviors. (shrink)

COLI – company owned life insurance – is often purchased by firms on employees in whom the firm has no demonstrable insurable interest. Though no immediate harm comes to individuals insured in this way, purchasing such policies raises moral questions. From a Kantian framework, questions arise about reciprocity and fairness, the deception of employees, the generation of mistrust, and the use of the employee’s life as a means to profit. No compensating social good is served by the sale of these (...) policies. (shrink)

This paper responds to the popular argument that business is like a game and is thus insulated from the demands of morality. In the first half of the paper, I offer objections to this argument as it is put forward by John Ladd in his well-known article, Morality and the Ideal of Rationality in Formal Organizations. I argue that Ladd''s analysis is flawed both because it deprives us of the ability to assert that a business is acting badly or that (...) its goals are irrational, and because it is internally inconsistent. In the second half of the paper, I give reasons for thinking that business is not like a game. (shrink)