Ethical implications in contracts
Open-knowledge reference entry
When creating a contract, a negotiator is not only doing so to reach an agreement between two or more parties, but to create an agreement that is durable; whereby parties of the contract are legally bound and committed to its promises. A legally binding contract is defined as an exchange of promises or an agreement between parties that the law will enforce, and there is an underlying presumption for commercial agreements that parties intend to be legally bound (Contracts 2007).
In order to be a legally binding contract, most contracts must contain two elements:
All parties must agree about an offer made by one party and accepted by the other.
Something of value must be exchanged for something else of value. This can include goods, cash, services, or a pledge to exchange these items.
In addition, certain contracts are required by state law to be in writing (real estate transactions, for example), while others are not.
Wade and Honeyman describe a ‘durable’ contract as one in which all parties substantially perform without abandonment and without resorting to legal proceedings. With only anecdotal evidence, it is difficult to know what percentages of contracts are in fact breached. It is probable that the statistics vary greatly over differing class, culture, wealth and type of transaction. The reasons for a breach of contract are also varying, and ethical issues can emerge in some situations.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ethical implications in contracts” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.