Qualitative Review of Ethics from Religion, Culture and Corporate Scandals

Abstract

Purpose and aim: Ethical breaches have become a common phenomenon across the globe, especially by big companies and top level executives, and have resulted in major corporate blunders, accounting scandals ending up in bankruptcy and deception of the various stakeholders. There is a need to make an introspection of ethical values and its impact on businesses, so that the future corporate social re-sponsibility and ethical leadership of the executives can have a binding. The paper investigates the role of religion and culture on ethics & morals and how it can be applied towards betterment of busi-ness conduct. Also it attempts to explore the root causes of corporate scandals and from an ethical perspective. Methodology: Literature review and case analysis of secondary data are the key sources of infor-mation in the study on a qualitative perspective. In the qualitative analysis of ethical contributions from religions and culture, the various themes are identified and grouped based on common grounds. Tabulation of the causal factors of corporate scandals, enables to clearly identify the root cause of unethical business practices and immoral leadership. The various findings are to be taken in a positive note for the future corporate businesses and ethical leadership of executives. Findings and novelty: The various reflections from literature on global religions, cultures, Indian my-thology, classical Tamil literature on ethics, leadership and behavior, identify various morals, virtues and founding pillars for mankind, especially for business and nation governance perspective in these changing times of the Globalized world pestered with scandals and fraud. These moral values and ethical guides have passed the test of time, and fit enough to be reinstated in the mainstream of ethical and legal conduct of firms and Governments to serve the stakeholders and society at its best. From the pareto analysis of the various corporate scandals on an ethical perspective, it is inferred that 80% of the root causes of the corporate scandals could be attributed to the ethical dimension of abstaining from fraud (72.22%). The paper is very novel in exploring the ethical perspectives from various di-mensions of culture and religion across the globe. Also uniquely the paper identifies many common-alities from these ethical sources namely, transparency, trust, sustainability, justice and abstaining from fraud & corruption. Conclusion and future research: The paper concludes that todays globalized businesses needs to look into ethical values and moral principles explored in the study from the various cultural and religious dimensions, and can aid in preventing ethical misconduct and improving corporate sustainability, brand image and reputation. The future researchers can explore the various global legislative frame-works, in assessing the ethical strengths and weaknesses, since legal loopholes pave way for many corporate blunders. Also the existing climate and culture of global organizations can be assessed for ethical training, moral code of conduct and ethical decsion making.