ethics (used with a sing.

verb) The study of the general nature of morals and of the specific moral choices to be made by a person; moral philosophy. 3. ethics (used with a sing. or pl. verb) The rules or standards governing the conduct of a person or the members of a profession:medical ethics.
The basic concepts and fundamental principles of decent human conduct. It includes study of universal values such as the essential equality of all men and women, human or natural rights, obedience to the law of land, concern for health and safety and, increasingly, also for the natural environment. See also morality. Read more: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/ethics.html#ixzz2TqEafmYo

Ethics, also known as moral philosophy which refers to the reflection upon moral actions, it is a branch of philosophy that involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and [1] wrong conduct. The term comes from the Greek word ethos, which means "character". Ethics is a complement to Aesthetics in the philosophy field of Axiology. In philosophy, ethics studies the moral [1 behavior in humans, and how one should act. Ethics may be divided into four major areas of study:
"Business ethics is the study of business situations, activities, and decisions where issues of right and wrong are addressed." "The ethics of business is the ethics of responsibility. The business man must promise that he will not harm knowingly."

Need or Importance of Business Ethics

These twelve points below discuss the need, importance of business ethics.

Image Credits Sameer Akr

Ethical objective:

The goals set by an organization that fall within an established set of moral guidelines or fair business practices. Most business managers will only set ethical objectives for their company since doing anything else will tend to tarnish their reputation

Definition of Code of Ethics

A code of ethics is a set of guidelines that governs the behavior of a company and its members. It is especially important in the event that a company has to decide what type of behavior conforms to acceptable or reasonable standards

ethical decision-making
Ethical decision-making helps people make difficult choices when faced with an ethical dilemma, a situation in which there is no clear right or wrong answer. For example, would it be right for a CEO to keep a contractual bonus when the business is making lower-paid colleagues redundant? Ethical decision-making typically examines three perspectives: the ethic of obedience; the ethic of care; and the ethic of reason. The ethic of obedience looks not only at the letter of the law, but also the spirit or moral values behind it. The ethic of care engages our emotional intelligence and empathy in making a decision from other peoples perspectives: "How would I feel in their shoes?". Finally, the ethic of reason engages our rational brain. Here we might use wisdom and experience to calculate various likely outcomes.
Type of ethics
Meta-ethics - asking how we understand the process of thinking on ethics.

Normative ethics - often posing thought experiments to consider which principle of morality is strongest (there are tons of arguments here)

Applied ethics - considering how one can apply ethics to particular real life setting (eg biomedical ethics, morality of punishment, etc.)

From there you have a few different approaches especially in the normative and applied side.

Deontology - the position that duties and obligations provide guidance, although certain obligations have precedence over others.

Consequentialism - the position that what is right are the outcomes. This is often utilitarian

although there are approximately 7,465,724,622 different branches of utilitarianism.

And a bunch of other smaller ones but the main question in answered.