Ethics in Business
What are Ethics?
Ethics are norms or standards of behavior that guide moral choices about our behavior and our relationship with others. Business should guide. As other social organization, all parties in business should exhibit ethical behavior.
General Business Ethics
Business ethics is guided by its corporate vision. For a non-profit organization, social welfare should come first than financial interest, for a corporate, first should consider the returns to its shareholders than social welfare. It differs as the aspect change.
Every corporate should have a minimum level of social responsibility, though it’s a matter of debate to identify the share of support.
Business also has to set a policy how it will behave to its rivals. How it will attack or counter-attack in the competition.
Business also set a behavioral instruction about how it will try to influence the political environment to its favor.
Beside these, almost every aspect of the business have ethical guideline to follow.
1. Ethics of accounting information
-Accounting should always follow GAAP [Generally Accepted Accounting Principal]. -Creative accounting or any misleading financial analysis should be prohibited. Corporate -CEO and Top management should not get excessive payments, as it directly concern with the shareholders interest.
– Bribery and other unethical activities should be prohibited as those have direct bad effect on society.
2. Ethics of human resource management
– HR department should not discrimination on the bases of age (ageism), gender, race, religion, disabilities, weight and attractiveness.
– HR department should maintain a standard environment in workplace and should ensure the safety of the workers.
3. Ethics of sales and marketing
– Organization should not practice unethical behavior like spam marketing, price fixing by the group of sellers, offensive advertising, sex in advertising, marketing in school, black markets, grey markets, etc.
4. Ethics of production
– In production, several ethical issues should be considered. Organization should not produce defective product for getting higher profit margin.
– Production unit must consider environmental issues arise while production
– While testing a product, it should not violate the any law or rights. E.g. animal rights.
5. Ethics of intellectual property, knowledge and skills
– All patent and copyright should be followed.
– While doing survey on the competition, no ethical values should violate.