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Is a corrupt business or organization also unethical? Why or why not?
Let's accept, for the sake of this discussion, that businesses are run by people, and therefore not make distinctions between people and business.
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4 Answers
Gotta be a trap but I'm going in Belldon - yes (and no). Not making a distinction between business and people, corruption is identified in such ways as taking bribes, as lacking in integrity, tainted practices, and as a perverted view on right and wrong against social/business norms, generally for financial gain or survival. Ethics are a willingness to act and respond as generally accepted within the culture you are in. In the US giving/taking a bribe is unethical and the business giving/accepting them would be seen as corrupt (unless you are on K Street of course).
Here's my NO response - in some countries (and streets in the U.S.) bribes (and such) are a part of business operations and are budgeted into projects and are seen as generally accepted and even expected, therefore seen as not corrupt to those involved. Not giving/accepting a bribe may in fact be seen as unethical.
When in Rome....
If the moral code is to act honestly any deviation from this would be corrupt and unethical to some degree.
Yes, if one is corrupt, that is by definition a lack of ethics.
Also, I'm going to take the opportunity to counter the notion that businesses can be amoral.
Businesses are simply collections of people for a specific purpose (typically involving profit). Businesses are led by people, their culture is ultimately defined by people, and people are sometimes hired to be the singular face for a business. Different leaders have imposed their style and signature on a business at different times.
Businesses, therefore, have the same ability to be amoral as people do -- which is to say, none. That we condition ourselves to think that they are amoral, allows their leaders to think that their actions are independent of the actions that their businesses ultimately take.
The fact that some persons regularly practice a separation (or attempted separation) of personal and professional lives does not suggest that any collection of people can truly have such a separation.
-ASB: http://XeeMe.com/AndrewBaker
If you think hard about it, both are ways of saying that a firm, either corporately or through condoning individual dishonesty by its employees, does things that are wrong and that it should not do. Giving that different names or wrapping it in jargon does not change the fact that firms should not knowingly do wrong things (either by commission or omission) and by doing such things they are both corrupt and unethical.
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