Business ethics: standards of acceptable and unacceptable behavior, in the organization, often determined by key stakeholders’ interests.

Codes of ethics: formal statements of what an organization expects of employees in the way of ethical behavior (relates to key ethical and legal risk areas of the organization).

Coercive power: the ability to influence behavior by imparting penalties.

Corporate citizenship: the extent to which business lives up to its social responsibilities including economic, ethical, legal and philanthropic.

Corporate culture: a set of values, beliefs, goals, norms and ways to solve problems that employees of an organization share (‘the way we do things’).

Corporate governance: the formal system of accountability and control for organizational decision making and resource allocation.

Cultural relativism: an understanding that morality varies from one culture to the next and therefore, business practices are defined as right or wrong by particular cultures.

Ethical relativism: the belief, that without exception, one culture determines ethical behavior for the entire world.

Ethics audit: systematic evaluation of an organization’s ethics program to determine its effectiveness.

Ethical issue intensity: the relevance or importance of an ethical issue to the individual, work group and organization.

Ethical climate: a component of corporate culture thought of as the character or decision processes used to determine whether responses to issues are right or wrong.

Expert power: knowledge and credibility leading to influence.

Group norms: acceptable behavior as determined by groups for group members.

Leadership: ability or authority to guide and direct others toward achievement of goals, involves motivating and enforcing the organizations rules and policies.

Legitimate power: persons maintaining a right to exert influence, based on title or position, and others have an accept it.

Motivation: forces within the individual which guide behavior toward goal achievement.

Opportunity: conditions that limit or permit ethical behavior.

Reward power: the ability to influence behavior by offering incentives.

Significant others: those who influence the work group including peers, managers, coworkers and subordinates.

Social responsibility: business’s obligation to maximize its positive impact and minimize its negative impact upon society by supporting its economic, ethical, legal and philanthropic responsibilities.

Socialization: process or teaching employees about the values, rules, and behaviors considered acceptable by the organization.

Stakeholders: constituents having a claim or stake some aspect of the organization’s products, operations, markets, industries, and outcomes.

Whistle-blowing: disclosing an employees wrongdoing to outsiders such as the media and government.

Source:  O.C. Ferrell, John Fraedrich and Linda Ferrell (2004) Business Ethics: Ethical Decision Making and Cases, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company), 6^th edition.