“Honesty is the best policy”, a phrase that is valid not only in one’s daily lives, but also in business ethics.
Ethics are very important to all business people. Yet, many neglect ethics as an important concept that has a major impact upon a person's success as an entrepreneur and investor. Business, after all, involves dealing with money, either one’s own or borrowed.
It also involves building successful money based relationships with clients and customers. Such relationships must be built on trust – and having ethical foundations are imperative to the building of trust. Therefore ethics constitute the cornerstone of success in business.
It is important to realize that ethics is important irrespective of the size of the business. Whether your business enterprise is large or small, whether your customers are many or few, the relevance of adhering to high ethical standards is the same.
You see, ethics in business is closely linked to the moral value chain that intertwines through all its operations. Moral value impinges on every single customer. There can be no exceptions irrespective of whether your customers are 10 or 10,000 in number or more. Ethics apply to each of them.
As a discipline, ethics in business can be either applied or theoretical. Or to express it differently, it can be either pragmatic or philosophical. The former evolves, typically, into the do’s and dont’s that act as guidelines to achieving ethical behavior. The latter studies involve probing the whys and wherefores of ethics in business. It also examines the issue of defining ethics.
It promotes high standards, draws up a code and helps the entrepreneur self-evaluate his own personal ethical standard. This standard in turn helps the business enunciate the norms of ethical behavior of its employees. An honest business employs only honest professionals. This must be clearly understood down the line.
In most successful business organizations high ethical standards are compulsory. An employee bribing somebody, even to further his employer’s interests, is likely to be dismissed. Many multinationals refuse to conduct business in countries where bribes are commonly given and taken. These are examples of the applied side of ethics in business.
A final point . In some factors there can be no compromises in ethics irrespective of profit or loss considerations. For instance, under no circumstances should a business break the laws of the country where’s it’s in business whether it likes these laws or not.