5-2 Project Submission Two Report Southern New Hampshire University BUS 206 Business Law
Introduction The definition of ethics and law according to the Cambridge Dictionary is "ethics is a system of accepted beliefs that control behavior, especially a system based on morals" (Cambridge Dictionary, 2024), "law is a rule, usually made by the government, that is used to order the way in which a society behaves" (Cambridge Dictionary, 2024). Corporate social responsibility is a belief based on the idea that businesses have a bigger responsibility to the public, than just providing goods and services (BDC, 2024). According to the University of Redlands ethical business practices "refers to the standards for morally right and wrong conduct in business" (University of Redlands, 2021). I think corporate social responsibility relates to ethical business practices because if a corporation puts a higher value on their responsibility to the public and utilizes a morally strong ethic this will help a corporation to avoid wrong conduct. Corporate social responsibility if practices by corporations' ties into ethical business practices because ethical business practices are the fundaments of adhering to social responsibility. An example of a corporation utilizing corporate social responsibility and ethical business practices in the news is Ben & Jerry's. Ben & Jerry's advocates for social and environmental causes. They go beyond the legal obligations of responsibility and advocate and practice social and environmental practices such as advocating against genetically modified organism (GMO) food, and advocating for human rights (Ben & Jerry's, 2023). Ben & Jerry's is an example of a corporation utilizing ethical business practices to practice corporate social responsibility. Legally Ben & Jerry's does not have to avoid using GMO food, but they choose to do so because this is a cause the corporation believes in for the good of the general public.
Analysis In this scenario at Mountain Top View the company is facing both an ethical and legal issue. The first issue is that Steve the company's information technology lead discovered a breach of customer information in their database, and he did not report this to Carlos or Clare. Although he did fix the issue, he did not report the issue, this goes against the company's statement "We are committed to keeping customer information secure and protected" (Mountain Top View, 2024). Even though he fixed the breach, customer information i.e. names, addresses, and phone numbers of the customers who placed online orders in the first quarter of the year has been hacked and possibly compromised, this becomes a legal issue due to the hack of customer information and an ethical issue because of how Steve handled the situation. Clare Applewood who is the owner and stakeholder in Mountain Top View has a legal and ethical responsibility for protecting customer information. As a stakeholder and sole owner of Mountain Top View Clare has a duty to her customers and the hack of the customers information could be considered a breach of duty. In this situation Mountain Top View told their customers they would