Business Ethics

Business Ethics

© Sabari Ganesh; “All Rights Reserved” 
authorsabariganesh@gmail.com

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            Since time immemorial, there has been a constant and continuous oscillation between right and wrong; good and evil in the human mind. The ability of the human mind to distinguish between these two, has kept the tag – ‘Human Being’ intact. Ethics is the buzz word today; be it a common man, or a millionaire or a MNC; for the Id among the ego and superego, never changes.

Ethics constitute all those actions that are performed by us rightfully dictated by conscience. Generally, in any business set up, though the procedural compliance is achieved due to compulsion; the ethical stance of a company is the much tweaked and debated aspect. Any business set up rests on the following check list parameters –

·         The law abiding nature of the business venture;

·         The profitability of the business based on market forces;

·         Upon achieving the above; the ethical carriage of the business venture might arise.

Aspiring professionals in B-Schools are conditioned to believe that growth and profitability are the bottom-line of sustaining any business. This throws up the question – Growth and profitability at what cost! The ethical mind set of a company lies in its effective decision making ability when there arise a situation to choose between which is correct and that which is seemingly advantageous.

An unethical decision of a company that focus on immediate monetary gains is seemingly advantageous because, any business set up is dependent on the society for its inputs in terms of resources; and the final produce is also focused on satisfying the needs and wants of the people of the society. Any misadventure of the company that focuses on profitability in just monetary terms; and fails to meet the ethical standards and betterment of the society at large is a classic short sighted approach that is convinced to damage the reputation and in turn question the existence of the company itself.

The opening up of economies, and free trade under the auspices of World Trade Organisation (WTO), has effectively blurred the physical borders of nations. The free movement of labour, capital and goods has unified the whole world as a single market for the company. The resultant intense competition among companies has forced them to focus attentively on their core competency. Superior products; and services of better quality that aptly satisfy the customers’ needs and wants is the result. Today’s customers are more self-actualised – well informed, basic need set easily met; hence are on the lookout for brands and products that deliver more than the tangible; and effectively sync with their personality, providing positive enhancement!

In the present scenario, every human being walks around as an individual brand; positioning themselves as unique as possible in their efforts to gain social and professional value and respect! Companies, in their efforts to capture the mind share of the customer, have been into aggressive marketing and differentiation. However; the maturation of differentiation of products based on tangible features; followed by commoditisation of services, has forced companies to associate themselves and their produce with intangible values that sync with the projected personality of the target segment. Also, the employees becoming the first and foremost customers of the company and pertinent opinion makers on the image of the company; the ethical perspective of the company has gained critical significance.

Ethics, profitability and sustenance of business are no longer conflicting ideas; rather have become inevitable, successive rungs of the corporate ladder. Ethics has become the core and vital factor of differentiation for companies to effectively position themselves in a superior plane of perception than its competitors in their efforts to capture the mind-share and eventually the wallet-share of the prospective customers. However, implementation of ethics and the success of the companies to reap the desired benefit out of their ethical angle has never been a cake walk.

Implementation of ethics was found to be just impossible as an unconnected terminal activity of the value chain. It was through hard and real experience, companies realized that the success in implementing ethics as a differentiating tool begins with a revised vision, mission and objective parameters that redefined even the day-to-day operations of the company. Ideally, implementation of ethics should start at the top most ladder of the organisation structure with a redefined vision, mission and objectives; and every activity identified with what it believes; allowed to cascade down till the grass roots of the organisation to the ultimate customer.

Implementation of ethics was found to be more of an art than science. It requires dynamic initiatives and astute activities with minimum turnaround time; hence demanded an able and effective leadership than process orientation. More than positioning the products of the companies; implementation of ethics had a more humane touch to it that focused on managing and maintaining a human resource value chain that propagated the ethical perspective of the company to the outside world through ‘word of mouth’.

In the international business scenario, generally the talks among member nations revolve around policy matters and removal of trade restrictions. Ethics has been the latest entry among these traditional topics of discussions in the multilateral trade talks. The comparative advantage of nations is under the ethical scanner. Are the companies of the developed countries exploiting developing and lesser developed countries making use of their weak environmental and labour laws to manufacture products that are labour and pollution intensive; as they are no longer allowed in their home countries; or are the developing and lesser developed countries luring the companies of the developed countries with the ‘beauty’ of their natural resources for their economic development? What and where is the trade off? The debate continues…

Finally, in practical terms, ethics could be result oriented with absolutely no tolerance to an unethical activity at any level; or process oriented with occasional pitfalls considered acceptable, depends on the sagacious, sapient and shrewd leadership of the company.