Corporate Ethics

Corporate ethics also means business ethics.  Business and ethics are not alien.  Ethics is respected in business.  It is part of company law.Company directors have to sign an ethics declaration.

Corporate ethics is a kind of "applied ethics" or "professional ethics".  Corporate ethics applies to all aspects of business conduct, conduct of individuals in an organization and organizations as a whole. 

Applied ethics deals with ethical questions in many areas including such areas as medical, technical, legal and business ethics.  Of late, there are enough proofs to show of unethical business practices, so discussions on corporate ethics have become necessary.

Organizations today operate in the social and natural environment.  In view of this, business is duty bound to be accountable to the society in which it operates and services.  Despite the demands and pressures upon a business, it is bound to be ethical for two

Reasons:

• Whatever the company does, affects all the stakeholders, and
• Every action of the company has both ethical and unethical ramifications.

One of the reasons why the Corporate Ethics has  come to the forefront is the demise of small scale high trust and face-to-face firms and the emergence of huge multinational corporate capable of drastically affecting everyday lives of the masses.

The philosophy of business is to determine the fundamental purpose of the company.  If the purpose is to maximize profits for the shareholders at any cost, then it is unethical of the company.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a term used to debate the corporate` societal responsibility versus the company. Some of these issues are 

Ethical issues concerning relations between different companies, viz. hostile take-over, industrial espionage.

Leadership issues: corporate governance and corporate social entrepreneurship.

Contributions to political parties by corporate.

Misuse of corporate ethical policies as marketing instrument.

There has to be ethical policies and ethical principles in  Financial areas of the company, operational areas, human resources management, sales and marketing, advertising and promotional areas, production, property, property rights and intellectual property rights, technology/world wide web and in every aspect of the business.

Questions:

• What do you understand by corporate ethics?
• What is CSR?  Discuss some issues of ethics?