Contemporary Business Issues - Term Paper Example

Plenty of organizations have taken a serious look at their corporate social responsibility policies in recent years (Employee Benefits, 2005) and largely this is attributed to external pressure from society in regards to ethical issues. Increasing governance regulations, a cynical media, and pressure from environmental and social agitators, as well as the increasingly complex world of work inside corporations, have contributed to the pressing need to proactively manage the ethical dimension of business (Lagan, 2006).

From a company perspective, long-term growth requires honesty, trust, integrity, and credibility. Businesses with a well-fortified ethical culture have higher degrees of employee, customer, supplier, and investor satisfaction and loyalty (Collins, 2006). In contemporary business, these ethical drivers can affect the overall image of the company and satisfying these external pressures, and achieving rewards for loyalty requires extensive knowledge of the demand for quality ethical practices that cannot be achieved without establishing a formal business case.

No organization has a monopoly of wisdom (Le Jeune, 2005), meaning that information must be properly researched and analyzed before a decision with the potential for higher consequences, such as the establishment of ethical policies, should not be addressed without constructing an appropriate business case. When it comes to public relations imaging, in a modern context, the external environment maintains the ability to enhance or somewhat destroy a company's image based on the perception of its policies.

To sacrifice quality decision-making for a "fast fix" on ethical practices leaves the potential for certain aspects of organizational ethics to go unnoticed. Creation of a solid ethics business case allows the company to examine all possible angles and determine an ethical policy/action that satisfies all applicable parties. Satisfying the media while overlooking stakeholder interests, when determining good PR habits, is an oversight that might well have been avoided with the presentation of an appropriate business case.