How As A Corporate Manager You Can Ensure That Your
November 14th, 2009 | 
Author: How As A Corporate Manager You Can Ensure That Your Company Is Conducting Business A Way That Is Responsible And Ethically Sound?
How as a corporate manager you can ensure that your company is conducting business a way that is responsible and ethically sound?
In order to ensure the company is conducting business responsibly and ethically sound the following point given below are very much necessary to ensure:
Ethical issues and society examples
* Involvement in the community
* Honesty truthfulness and fairness in marketing
* Use of animals in product testing
* Agricultural practices e.g. intensive faming
* The degree of safety built into product design
* Donation to good causes
* The extent to which a business accepts its alleged responsibilities for mishaps spillages and
* leaks
* The selling of addictive products e.g. tobacco
* Involvement in the arms trade
* Trading with repressive regimes
Ethical issues arising from internal and industry practices examples
* Treatment of customers e.g. honoring the spirit as well as the letter of the law in respect to warranties and after sales service
* The number and proportion of women and ethnic minority people in senior positions
* The organizations loyalty to employees when it is in difficult economic conditions
* Employment of disabled people
* Working conditions and treatment of workers
* Bribes to secure contracts
* Child labor in the developing world
* Business practices of supply firms
Unethical practices in marketing examples
* Pricing lack of clarity in pricing
* Dumping selling at a loss to increase market share and destroy competition in order to subsequently raise prices
* Price fixing cartels
* Encouraging people to claim prizes when they phoning premium rate numbers
* Bait and switch selling attracting customers and then subjecting them to high pressure selling techniques to switch to an more expensive alternative
* High pressure selling especially in relation to groups such as the elderly
* Counterfeit goods and brand piracy
* Copying the style of packaging in an attempt to mislead consumers
* Deceptive advertising
* Irresponsible issue of credit cards and the irresponsible raising of credit limits
* Unethical practices in market research and competitor intelligence
Unethical practices relating to products examples
* Selling goods abroad which are banned at home
* Omitting to provide information on side effects
* Unsafe products
* Built in obsolescence
* Wasteful and unnecessary packaging
* Deception on size and content
* Inaccurate and incomplete testing of products
* Treatment of animals in product testing
Ethics and the supply chain
It would be hypocritical to claim to be a ethical firm if it turned a blind to unethical practices by suppliers in the supply chain. In particular:
* The use of child labor and forced labor
* Production in sweatshops
* Violation of the basic rights of workers
* Ignoring of health safety and environmental standards
An ethical producer has to be concerned with what is practiced by all firms upstream and downstream in the supply chain.
Bribery
This is a key ethical issue in business
* It first needs to be stated that bribery to secure a contract especially a contract with a public sector body is against the law and severe penalties can result
* However it is sometimes seem wrongly as a victimless crime and is often rationalized in terms of if we dont offer a bribery others will
* From a moral or ethical perspective it should be approached not in terms of can we get away with it but is it right to offer a bribe to secure a contract
Institute of Business Ethics Suggestions for Good Practice
The Institute recommends that organizations issue statements of ethical practice in respect of:
* Relations with customers
* Relations with shareholders and other investors
* Relations with employees
* Relations with suppliers
* Relations with the government and the local community
* The environment
* Relations with competitors
* Issues relating to international business
* Behavior in relations to mergers and takeovers
* Ethical issues concerning directors and managers
* Compliance and verification
What is an Ethical code?
This is a set of principles governing morality and acceptable behaviour
It is likely to cover:
* Personal behavior e.g. when dealing with customers and suppliers
* Corporate behavior e.g. when negotiating deals
* Behavior towards society e.g. when recruiting
* Behavior towards the environment e.g. when deciding on process
Ethical audit
This is an audit of all the firms activities
Purpose:
* To check that ethical principles are being pursued
* To check the extent to which actions are consistent with the organizations stated ethical intentions
* And to establish action plans if they are not
About the writer: Kamran Uddin
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