Abstract

Businesses, the engine for economic development, have a great power and influence on the evolution and well being of society. Malpractices by businessmen like food adulteration, black-marketing, artificial price hiking, cheating in weights and measures, selling of duplicate and harmful products like endosulphan, hoarding, etc. have become a usual scene in today’s market. This has resulted in the loss of trust and confidence of the customers in the businessmen. So, practicing business ethics are mandatory for the survival of business. Both researchers and practitioners have acknowledged the importance of responsibility for good business. It’s a common trend that the student groups who selected business & commerce as their subject of study are found to have the highest probability of becoming businessmen of tomorrow. So the main objective of this study is to assess the opinion of a group of vocational higher secondary school business and commerce students towards business ethics. The sample of the study is 200 vocational higher secondary school students from 4 schools of 2 Districts of Kerala. A questionnaire was used to assess the opinion of vocational higher secondary school students towards Business Ethics. (Menon & Meera, 2013). The statistical technique used for the study is percentage analysis. The results of the study showed that majority of the business & commerce vocational higher secondary school students 71.58% favoured the practice of business ethics by businessmen while 28.42% students are still with the view that the practice of business ethics is not a necessity in the present day business.

“The ethics of business is the ethics of responsibility. The business man must promise that he will not harm knowingly.” (Raymond C. Baumhart)

[1] Research Scholar, Dept. of Education, University of Calicut, Kerala.

[2] Associate Professor, Dept. of Education, University of Calicut, Kerala.