Why managers make a bad ethical choices? They try to do get more customers, make more profit and being a best manager. They believe that the activity is within reasonable ethical and legal limits – thats not “ really ” illegal or immoral. There is a line between right and wrong. In this line you are between your conscience and the corporation's benefit. In the business game if you want to be a winner you must be playing like a winner.

They believe that the activity is in individual’s corperation’s best interest – that the individual would somehow be expected to undertake the activity. The  activity is “ safe ” because it will never be found out or publicized. The activity helps the company, the company will condone it and even protect the person who engages in it. They think it is safe because nobody understand what they are doing. Then, if somebody understand, they believe the company protect them because they do it for corporation’s benefit.

The idea that an action is not really wrong is an old issue. How far is too far? All managers risk giving too much because of what their companies demands from them. But the same superiors who keep pressing you to do more, or to do it better, or faster, or less expensively, will turn on you should you cross that fuzzy line between right and wrong. They will blame you for exceeding instructions or for ignoring their warnings.

It is up to top management to send a clear and pragmatic message to all employees that good ethics is stil the foundation of good business.

The gap between the corparate decision and private conscience is not unbridgeable if a person is strong enough to do what needs to be done. In the business sometimes you make a big decision wrong or not.Listening your consience or doing the best for your corporation. Conscience is never killed; when ignored it merely goes underground where it manifactures the toxins of suppressed guilty often with serious psychological and physical consequences.
Because of that managers must be strong enough to make a tough decision.

When the directors and managers of a corparation enter the board room to debate policy they park their private consciences outside. If they did not subordinate their inner scruples to considerations of profitability and growth, they would fail in their responsibility to the company that pays them.

Most executives from time to time are almost compelled, in the interests of their companies or themselves, to practice some form of deception when negotiating with customers, dealer, labor unions, government officials, or even other departments of their companies – by bluffing – they seek to persuade others to agree with them.

Business is practiced by individuals as well as by corporations, has the impersonal character of a game. It demands both special strategyt and an understanding of it special ethics. The game is played at the all levels of corporate life, from the highest to the lowest. At the very instant that a man decides to enter business, he may be forced into a game situation. The major tests of every move in business as in all games of strategy are legality and profit. A man who intends to be a winner in the business game must have a game player’s attitude.

Reference

Ethics in Practice Managing the Moral Corporation, Edited Kenneth R. Andrews