Q.Define business ethics.

The definition should tie general ethical standards specifically to business decisions and relationships.

Business ethics is the application of general standards of right and wrong conduct — such as honesty, fairness and integrity — to the specific context of business decisions, behaviour and relationships. It asks questions like: is this advertisement honest? is this way of treating an employee fair? is this dealing with a supplier or competitor conducted in good faith?

Crucially, business ethics goes beyond mere legal compliance. An action can be entirely legal and still be regarded as unethical — for example, technically legal but deliberately misleading fine print in a contract. This is because law sets only a minimum, enforceable standard of conduct, while ethics can, and often does, demand more. Business ethics is not a single fixed code; instead, it draws on widely shared values — honesty, fairness, integrity, transparency, accountability, respect for law as a floor rather than a ceiling, and genuine concern for the legitimate interests of all those affected by a business decision, not just its shareholders.

The distinct study of business ethics is needed because business decisions routinely involve real conflicts of interest — between a business's own profit and the interests of a customer, employee, competitor or society — that law alone cannot anticipate or resolve in advance. Ethics supplies the standard by which a business is expected to resolve such conflicts fairly, even where no specific law dictates the outcome.

Defining business ethics as simply "following the law," which conflates it with legal compliance rather than a distinct, often broader, standard of conduct.