Ethical values are a mechanism that controls behavior in business and in other walks of life. Ethical restraints are more effective that certain crude controls such as police or economic incentives.
The Factors affecting business ethics are numerous, ranging from internal to external ones. The basic factors can be named as leadership, strategy and performance, individual characteristics, corporate culture and environment. Let us analyze each factor in detail:
1. LEADERSHIP: A leader is a person who leads the employees and the organization, and thus his decisions affect the ethics of the organization to a great extent. The inherent characteristics of the person thus affects the organization as a whole, and his personal ethics influences the
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STRATEGY AND PERFORMANCE: The strategy adopted by the organization towards ethical considerations and the choices they make affect how ethical their considerations are. Also, the performance strategy of the organization affects the behaviour in the market. If the orientation is solely towards success and profit, then nothing would be more important than the attainment of such target, leading to least consideration being given to the concept of ethics.
It means adhering to the societies basic rules that define right and wrong behavior. Ethical business performance can be improved by positive top management attitude , by motivating employees to be aware of ethical or legal issues, by introducing organizational changes that help employees at all levels, by refraining employees from unethical act, by building ethical safeguards into the company that is formation of code of ethics, ethics committee , ethical training programs , ethical audits
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SOCIAL FACTORS: The stand taken by the society towards ethical considerations is also relevant here. If the society takes a firm stand requiring the organization to behave in an ethical manner so as to enable its survival, then the business will also impart ethics into their activities. On the other hand, if the society is ignorant toward such factors, the chances for such considerations being ignored increases manifold. For example, in the case of the agitation against the Coca Cola Company at Plachimada by the people regarding water pollution concerns, the issue came up only because the people decided to