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Since 2002, many companies have appointed ethics officers. They often report to the Chief Executive Officer and are responsible for assessing the ethical implications of the company's activities, making recommendations regarding the company's ethical policies, and dissiminating information to employees. They are particularly interested in uncovering or preventing unethical and illegal actions. This trend is partly due to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the United States, which was enacted in reaction to a number of well-publicized corporate scandals. A related trend is the introduction of risk assessment officers that monitor how shareholders' investments might be affected by the company's decisions.
The effectiveness of ethics officers in the marketplace is not clear. If the appointment is made primarily as a reaction to legislative requirements, one might expect the efficacy to be minimal, at least, over the short term. In part, this is because ethical business practices result from a corporate culture that consistently places value on ethical behavior, a culture and climate that usually eminates from the top of the organization. The mere establishment of a position to oversee ethics will most likely be insufficient to inculcate ethical behaviour: a more systemic programme with consistent support from general management will be necessary.
Obviously, the foundation for ethical behavior goes well beyond corporate culture and the policies of any given company, for it also depends greatly upon an individual's early moral training, the other institutions that affect an individual, the competitive business environment the company is in and, indeed, society as a whole.
The literature also addresses the ethical dimension. Rabbi Yisrael Lipkin Salanter (19th century), founder of the Mussar movement in Eastern European, taught that just as one checks carefully to make sure their food is kosher, so too should one check to see if their money is earned in a kosher fashion ( Chofetz Chaim, Sfat Tamim, chapter 5). The teachings go much further, the Kitzur Shulkhan Arukh (62:1) quotes the tradition that in one's judgement in the next world, the first question asked is: "were you honest in business?"
Followers of John Locke would suggest that the first instance of property is the property that one has in himself, and that one's labor is an extension of this. The labor theory of value suggests that when one mixes his labor with an object, he thereby makes it his property, and that his labor is the principal means of measuring value. Marxists subscribe to this view, and they also believe that modern production, which involves many inputs, makes an equitable division of this property impossible, which, among other reasons, necessitates that the state hold property and the factors of production in common for everyone.
Critics of Marxism say that value is subjective and that labor is incommensurable (e.g., comparing the labor of a house painter to the labor of Picasso), and that only price itself is objective, which is the product of multiple, subjective valuations (see Ludwig von Mises) Moreover, what really matters for assigning ownership is whether or not property was acquired or exchanged fairly (see Robert Nozick), which is known as the historical entitlement theory .
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