Business ethics relates to how any organisation conducts its business in order to make profit or achieve other goals. Any organisation can seek to do what it does in a way that is guided by ethical values.
Whether an organisation is judged to be ethical however, will involve a subjective assessment of any of the following: the products and services it offers, its founding priorities, goals and values, its philanthropy, its reputation among its stakeholders, the way it treats customers and staff etc.
Rather than claiming to be ‘ethical’, the IBE would suggest that a business or other organisation demonstrates that it ‘takes ethics seriously’.