The statement has been made that "ethics has no place in business" and the implications of this statement and its inferring characteristics provide a complex issue in the operation of national and multinational corporations. Because ethical decision making is often not as profitable as choices that do not embrace ethical elements, the perspective has emerged that the nature of an effective business mindset inherently brings about unethical behavior. In order to consider this statement and its implications, it is necessary to recognize the ethical decision-making processes of a number of companies, and reflect upon the fiscal, organizational and operational implications of ethical choices and then relate this process to the perceived outcomes if the opposite choices were made. As an element of this evaluation, it is also necessary to consider the nature of morality and the progression of moral underpinnings for business operations and the implications as companies expand into multinational arenas. Ethics can be described as: "the activity of examining one's moral standards or the moral standards of a society, and asking how these standards apply to our lives" (11). The application of ethics in business is generally perceived as the evaluation of individual and collective moral standards, a reflection of societal morality, and then the determination of business decisions that are not only based on the efficacy of business operations, but also on these The problem that many corporationsperceive when pursuing the application of ethics in businessis that ethical choices are not always the most soundbusiness decisions. For example, when the pharmaceuticalcorporation Merck discovered that they could research anddevelop a drug that would end river blindness in millions ofpeople worldwide, but that there would be no financialbenefit and high costs involved with this process(especially because those who need the treatment are membersof the poor...
