Ethic week 3 Project Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Ethic week 3 Project - Essay Example According to Siekman (2011), women are denied advancement to higher positions as evident in Duke’s case yet women employees account for about 72% of the company’s hourly employees and with only 33% of Wal-Mart store managers. The Supreme Court ruled in favor or Wal-Mart and against women’s class action this has helped Wal-Mart in maintaining its policy of no unionized workers since this would give them a bargaining power. Legal issues refer to matters that are protected by law or regulation and involve all persons within their jurisdiction (Lehman & DuFrene, 2010). Ethical issues are matters concerned with doing what is morally right. However, an overlapping relationship exists between them in that what is unethical is considered to be illegal in some instances while in others, unethical issues are considered to be legal. In others, what is illegal is considered to be ethical. In this regard, businesses have to consider law and ethics as two different things. An example of unethical but legal issue is Wal-Mart’s labor practices and policy which has forced most vendors to set their commodities at extremely low prices for them to be sold in Wal-Mart Stores. For vendors, the best way was consider aligning their production costs to those of Wal-Mart since it is within its standards of ethical conduct. An illegal but ethical issue includes the recent Vermont that makes it illegal for pharmaceutical company to give $25 or more gifts to personnel or doctors and imposes $10,000 for each violation. For the pharmaceutical companies, the best way is to act within the law as they lobby legal changes. Often, credit history check on new employees is used to gauge their responsibility level in that employees should be reliable and their past credit conduct like paying bills would be best to proof reliability. Credit checks also include information about an applicant’s former employers who