Ethics and values are very simple words which mean principle or code of conduct. Ethics refers to a set of moral rules that describes acceptable conduct and behaviour in the society. The primary need of human is being fair, honest and ethical in the daily walks of life. Ethics refers to society’s sense of the right way of living our daily lives. It does this by establishing rules, principles, and values on which we can base our conduct. Ethics are society based whereas values and morals related to an individual. Ethics are dependent on values and morals and they tend to vary between various contexts whereas morals are usually consistent. A person cannot be a good human if he has no morals. We have morals and ethics towards ourselves, our family, and our organizations. Morals and ethics relating to friends and relatives also exist.
Business ethics is a wider term that includes many other sub ethics that are relevant to the respective field. For example, there is marketing ethics for marketing, ethics in HR for Human resource department and so on. Business ethics in itself is a part of applied ethics. Business ethics tries to create a sense of right and wrong in the organizations.
Values refer to people’s stable life goals, reflecting what is most important to them. Values are established throughout one’s life as a result of accumulating life experiences, and values tend to be relatively stable. The values that are important to a person tend to affect the types of decisions they make, how they perceive their environment, and their actual behaviours.