Today’s business environment faces many problems such as exploitation of resources, fraud, unfair trade practices etc. The basic reasons behind these problems are lack of integrity, ethics and core values in business. Integrity, ethics and core values helps to protect the interest of all stake holders, increase the goodwill of the company, earn more profit and minimize the regulations. So integrity, ethics and core values are essential for the survival of a company. So every organisation should have these qualities. This will bring many advantages to the organisations and will help to increase the trust of society and government in the company. Integrity Integrity is a concept of consistency of actions, values, methods, measures, principles, expectations, and outcomes. In ethics, integrity is regarded as the honesty and truthfulness or accuracy of one’s actions. Integrity can be regarded as the opposite of hypocrisy, in that it regards internal consistency as a Continue reading
Business Ethics
Aligning Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility
History tells us that ethics generate trust. But before anything else, ethics create a reputation, which in turn develops the elements of trust between people. The thrust of intensive ethical attention in business is brought about by the growing power of consumers towards businesses. Gone are the days when they would just buy products based on what it offers because now they would likely care about the brand’s practices. Consider the impact of Nike’s marred reputation on its economic activities when unethical workplace environments and practices were made public. The company was quick to decide on what it should do to the situation, which is to gain public trust again through public showmanship of ethical efforts. Although ethical choices are unavoidable and ethics is inescapable even in business, the intensity of such phenomenon has increased due to the growing concern on the collective impact of a business’ unethical action. The Continue reading
The Significance of Corporate Governance
Corporate Governance can be defined as the organizational structure of a company. It encompasses the overall processes, operations and policies by which a company is controlled and functions. According to James McRitchie corporate governance is most often viewed as both the structure and the relationships which determine corporate direction and performance. Within the governing body of a corporation there are various stakeholders. Stakeholders are individuals which are of great importance to the company because they contribute directly or indirectly to its economic activity. Stakeholders retain different degrees of importance within an organization depending on their title or function which are some of the following: shareholders, the board of directors, employees, customers, creditors and suppliers. All together this group of individuals defines a corporate community in which day to day business is conducted and must be sustained in order for the company to survive. Similar to any other community, where there Continue reading
Customer-Oriented Environmental Sustainability – Meaning and Importance
The general public and international societies have always argued that to achieve sustainable development, the economic activities that human beings engage in should be able to protect natural resources. In as much it is believed that controlling the global population size would certainly help in achieving environmental sustainability; however statistical analysis and projection show that the global population would have to increase and therefore this might not be sustainable. Thus changing the customer-oriented lifestyle in developed nations would be more sustainable. Environmental sustainability should aim at capturing environmental systems dynamics by building adaptive and resilient systems. It should aim at achieving pollution control by reducing environmental pollutants such as greenhouse gases and other gases which directly and indirectly affect human lives and the environment such as sulfides. Thus ensuring sustainable transportation and energy-related activities as well as ecological activities would better help achieve environmental sustainability. Customer-oriented environmental sustainability aims at achieving Continue reading
Case Study: Analysis of the Ethical Behavior of Coca Cola
Coca-Cola is the world’s largest beverage company that operates the largest distribution system in the world. This allows Coca-Cola companies to serve more than 1 billion of its products to customers each day. The marketing strategy for Coca-Cola promotes products from four out of the five top selling soft drinks to earn sales such as Coke, Diet Coke, Fanta and Sprite. This process builds strong customer relationships, which gives the opportunity for these businesses to be identified and satisfied. With that being said, customers will be more willing to help Coca-Cola produce and grow. Pepsi and Coca-Cola, between them, hold the dominant share of the world market. Even though Coca-Cola produces and sells big across the United States, in order for the company to expand and grow, they had to build their global soft drink market by selling to customers internationally. For example, both companies continued to target international markets Continue reading
Business Ethics Case Study: Caterpillar Tax Fraud Scandal
Accounting fraud is the manipulation of financial statements in order to benefit the business financially or to create a false appearance of financial health. In the situation of Caterpillar Inc. (CAT) – a manufacturer of heavy construction and mining equipment, diesel-electric locomotives, diesel, and natural gas engines, and industrial gas turbines – the payment of federal income taxes on their earnings was avoided to boost the company’s financial status, saving the company billions of dollars and keeping its stock price high. CAT, having more than 500 locations worldwide – including the Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East – is vast in size and an economic standpoint, with sales and revenues of $53.9 billion in the year 2019. However, a lawsuit against Caterpillar Inc. for inadequate tax disclosure had greatly impacted the company from the time period of 2013 to 2017. A great portion of Caterpillar Inc.’s investigation Continue reading