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| Picture by: crissum
Business ethics
is describes by many writers are very broad. Ethics in simple terms means the
moral principles that govern the behavior of a person or the conducting of an
activity. Businesses conduct ethics management programs in order to establish
the right and wrong amongst its employees. In a diverse environment where
employees comes from different cultures and religion it is very important to
establish fair grounds in which the employees should be treated equally.
Inequality in a workplace can lead to arguments amongst employees. Also
demotivate the ones who are not involved since they feel that the environment
is not suitable for them. It is one of the main factors an employee or a
customer looks for when deciding to become loyal to an organization. How
organization treat their employees is vital to a healthy relationship which
would contribute to the quality and productiveness of the employees work. From
the recruitment process to training and promotions and employees and the
employer has duties to be fulfilled in order to work towards the objective of
the organization.
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The ethics of a business does not apply only to how the
organization treats its employees but also the customers, suppliers,
distributors and competitors. For example, marketing and selling, fair competition
and incentives.
These actions from the organization have various benefits. Some of the benefits
are:
- Improvement of the society with the realization of the importance of establishing laws and regulations for the safety of the workers.
- It enables a strong teamwork and productivity. In a friendly fair environment there will be more support for each other in the work place therefore more team work thus improving the productivity.
- It improves the public image of the organization. When it comes to recruitment the organization will highly benefit from having retired staff who would speak of the good ways the organization treat its employees. This would help them to get more candidates to the posts they need.
Building a good ethics framework in a business will save the
business from having to pay huge fines. This is due to the breaking of the
environmental and ethical laws. It is considered by some that since the fined
amount to the organization outweighs the money made by the organization its
results in the lack of business ethics. However organization would not prefer
to have angry customers or pressure groups on the backs all the time. To
conclude, to conduct ethical principles in an organization it does not have to
be labeled profitable or unprofitable. It’s simply the right thing to do. To be
environmentally and socially responsible the organization can show its
willingness to cooperate with the laws and regulations of the
country and show its respect for ethics in business by treating all its
stakeholders fairly.
The above figure is described by Laurie J. Mullins in his book
Management and organization behavior as follows “A useful model that describes
ethical business circles which views the companies various activities as
occurring within a series of expanding circles moving out from the center”. He
further goes on to explain the inner most circle to the outermost circle. The
innermost circle shows the internal working of the business and the way
individuals and colleagues are treated. The second circle defines the ethics of
customer relations and marketing also the pricing and advertising of goods and
services. The third circle focus on relations with other companies. Finally the
fourth circle shows how the company relates to the local community.