The Idea of Business Ethics Overseas - Coursework Example

Business Ethics Overseas of Affiliate Introduction Ethics is becoming a serious concern in business worldwide. Defining business ethics is hard because it is not written down unlike in laws. Secondly, business ethic is usually unpredictable especially in the application aspect. Ethics is a set of standards that have evolved from the human religion and cultural heritage. With all these considerations, business ethics may be defined as the application of proper business policies and practices about potential controversial ethical issues such as insider trading, corporate social responsibility, bribery, corporate governance, discrimination, and fiduciary responsibilities. Business ethics applies the human moral and ethics to the running and operation of the business. It is often guided by the established laws of the country (Hoffman, 1994). Business ethics is only moral principles that meant to guide the way a given business behaves. These are the same principles that are used to determine the actions of an individual that are a-plied in various businesses. Business ethics requires the companies to clearly distinguish between right and wrong ethics in the way business is conducted. It involves making the best moral and ethical choices. It is apparently very easy to identify unethical business practices than the ethical ones. For example, companies are not expected to use child labor or engage in bribery because it is unethical. Historically, business ethics reflects the norms or a particular period of time. This implies that the field of business ethics varies with time. It changes with changes in cultural and accepted norms in the society. As times passes, human cultural norms evolve thus causing the acceptable human behaviors to become objectionable. As a result, the business ethics and the general behavior evolve. For example, the business, which was involved in slavery, colonialism, and the cold war were totally different and evolved according to the prevailing accepted norms. The idea of business ethics has come a long way. Firms started adopting business statute during late 1980s. Apparently, they were doing this to simply distance themselves from major busyness scandals of the day that would potential affect their public image. It was until the end of the cold war that the idea of business ethics caught full attention of the business community and the academicians. During this time, several practical issues arose especially with the international business. Some of the issues that received more emphasis included the cultural relativity of ethical values in business. Many issues have helped evolve and develop the business ethics field. Some of these issues include (1) the search for and necessity of universal value for international business behavior, (2) the need to compare different business ethics from different countries, (3) the need to compare business ethics from different regions, (4) ethical issues of transacting international business such as bio-piracy and bio-prospecting, (5) globalization and cultural imperialism and, (6) varying global standards on business ethics. These factors created a good environment for emergence of the modern-day business ethic concept (Bhatia, 2004). In short, the primary aim of oversea business ethics is to create a free and fair business environment where business can be conducted with a human touch in order to provide sound welfare to the society. No business is good and acceptable if it does not give sound welfare to the society and the people involved. The principles of business ethics are strongly valued in overseas because of these reasons. Oversea business ethical dimensions There are so many ethical dimensions of business environment. However, the major concern is striking a balance between the employee own ethical standards and those of the company. Ideally, business ethic is meant to provide moral frameworks that if accepted, may make the business gain public acceptance. It is a form of ethics that applied to professionals to examine the moral and ethical principle problems that often arise in the business environment. Business ethics applies to all aspect of business operation and conduct. In addition, business is very relevant to individual professionals and the entire organizations. The primary reason business ethics is implemented to guarantee the existence of required level of trust between various market participants and consumers. For example, it is expected of a portfolio manager to give the same consideration to the family of portfolio members and individual investors to ensure that there is fair treatment of the public (Zimmerli, Richter, & Holzinger, 2007). There are possibilities of potential conflict between ethical and commercial considerations in running companies. These conflicts are real and any business is likely to be affected. Ethical issues are global. Most importantly, there is no simple formula that can be used in solving ethical potential. Most people are concerned with knowing when the business decisions cross the line into a conflict of ethical standard. The potential of ethical business conflict becomes more complicated when the business is done in areas, countries, or regions, which uphold strong ethics and culture. These complications may be overboard. For instance, because the company needs to strictly comply with the country’s laws and ethics, they might find it hard to put together their employees. The concept of business ethics oversea is more alike in other parts of the world. In overseas, the employees are basically faced with the dilemma of balancing the moral standards of the companies they work for and their own moral standard. The oversea companies have their own set moral standard which employees are expected to follow. On the other hand, the employees might be having their own moral standard, which they are following. The employees’ moral standard might vary significantly depending on their cultural background. The biggest challenge comes in when the company hires her employees from different regions with different cultural backgrounds. This problem actually deepens as globalization takes place in most oversea companies. Nowadays, most oversea companies do not recruit from their won regions alone. With globalization and mobility of workers, companies can recruit from any part of the world (Malachowski, 2001). In oversea, the business ethics tries to establish whether the employees should view the business world as an artificial environment where rules they choose to live by are not necessarily applicable. Generally, the employees have to choose between the ethical rules of the company and their own ethical rules that they have designed to guide their lives. This often brings conflict as most of these ethical rules in most cases oppose each other. Sometimes the ethical standard set by the company is totally against the expectations of the employees. Therefore, a balance must be met or the conflict will escalate. What must oversea companies do to ensure that employees to have the perceptions that their ethical standards are not recognized by the company (Weiss, 2008). Another significant dimension of oversea business ethics is to separate right and wrong, moral and immoral, good and bad, fair and unfair, and proper and improper business action. By extension, the oversea companies use business ethics to establish an acceptable code of conduct within their organization. In actual sense, it tells the employees, customers, and business partners how to behave with one another in the organization. It provides the guidelines through which people involved in the organization relate and interact with one another in doing the business. These principles are very essential in business all over the world not only in overseas. The process of doing business is taking a new twist by involving ethical consideration. All these consideration are meant to enhance fairness, justice, openness, and morality (Bhatia, 2004). The principles of business ethics require the oversea business community to supply its customers with quality goods and services at all times. In addition to this, the oversea business communities are expected to regularly supply their goods and services at reasonable market prices. The supplied goods and services should never be overpriced or underpriced at all times. By following these business ethics, they are required to avoid any form of indulgence in unfair trade practices such as promoting misleading advertisements, black marketing, adulteration, and cheating in weights and measures amongst others. Doing any of these constitutes an offense an immorality in the business community. By following strong moral ethics, businesses are expected to give fair wages to their employees. In addition, they are expected to provide their employees with good working conditions (Coady & Sampford, 1993). There are various additional ethical dimensions of oversea business ethics. For instance, the business communities are not expected to exploit their workers under any circumstance. Exploitation of workers is not tolerated because it is not considered a moral act. In addition, oversea business ethics encourages competition in the market for all types of business. The market is open and anyone can join at will. Business ethics considered competition to be very health for the business community. Competition increases the availability of alternatives. On the other hand, unfair competition must be avoided because it is not healthy for the overall economic growth. The principles of business do not favor monopoly. In fact, monopoly should be avoided at all cost because it limits free and fair competition in the market. Stakeholders Stakeholders form part of the important overseas business ethical process. By definition, a stakeholder is any person, organization, or group that is concerned or interested in a given business. The interest of stakeholder in the business may vary depending on many issues such as profitability, social responsibility amongst others. The actions and decisions of the business may affect the stakeholder’s interest. Likewise, stakeholders may have a direct influence on the operations of the business as a whole. It can directly influence the operations, objectives, and policies of the business. Examples of business stakeholders include directors, creditors, government, employees, owners (shareholders), trade unions, suppliers, and the community where the company operates and draw its resources. The significance of a particular stakeholder may vary from company to company (Bredeson, 2011). The roles played by stakeholders in the business ethical circles are enormous. They include enabling the business understands the priorities and perspective of the external groups that are directly affected by the particular activities of the business. Understanding the business environment is crucial because it help determine the long survival of the business. It also helps management makes wise decisions about their daily business operation. In addition, it helps the company come up with the suitable products for the particular group of people being targeted. A product or service may not be able to sell because it is not culturally accepted. Nevertheless, if modifications are made accordance to the expectation of the people, then it is fully accepted (Malachowski, 2001). The principles of overseas business ethics require protection of the stakeholder’s interest. This is majorly because stakeholders great role in determining the business’s ability to succeed. Furthermore, analysis of stakeholder’s interest is very crucial as it help the business identify activities and factors that affect their decision-making processes. In addition, analysis of stakeholders helps the business appropriately measures the impact of their activities on the communities especially from where they draw their resources. There is a long list of overseas business ethic stakeholders. In fact, it can be concluded that any person or group with an interest in a particular business form part of its ethical stakeholders. Overseas business ethic stakeholders include different persons, groups, and entities such as managers, directors, creditors, government, employees, owners (shareholders), trade unions, suppliers, and the entire community. Every stakeholder has a clearly defined interest, which are collectively aimed at improving and standardizing morals of doing business across the region and the globe at large. It is pretty wise to recognize that, in oversea business community, every stakeholder is particularly interested in aligning the business ethics to meet its interest (Weiss, 2008). The stakeholders of oversea business ethics are more concerned with helping the business realign its operations to achieve comprehensive development. For example, a stakeholder may enforce the business to help improve the infrastructure, water, and electricity supply within the area. This results in comprehensive community development. In particular, oversea business community uses the appropriate toolbox to engage stakeholders and the community at large in matters of development. In the same case, the establishment of a new company may lead to resettlement of the community for the resources to be fully accessed. This may cause controversies and lead to divisions in the community. In such case, stakeholders play very important roles in setting out stages and processes that may help solve the problem (Bredeson, 2011). The stakeholders of oversea business ethics play so many important roles in the overall business process. They are a direct link between business and the community thereby coming in to solve the problems of disagreements and differences in interests. Stakeholders are responsible for setting out the best international business practices, fair compensation, structured consultation, and enhancing and restoring the livelihoods of the community. Although the interests of stakeholders may vary, they are all aimed at helping create good and acceptable morals of transacting business. Nowadays, business is not only interested in profitability, as it was a long time ago. The businesses are also interested in protecting their image and creating moral standards that are accepted by the community. Stakeholders’ interests The stakeholders of the oversea business have varied interests all of which are concerned with creating strong moral standard of transacting business across the globe. The stakeholders’ interests model the business ethical consideration. This is what analysis of stakeholders’ interest is very important for any business. As said afore, the stakeholders in business ethics range from directors, creditors, government, employees, owners (shareholders), trade unions, suppliers, and the local community where the business draws its resources from. These different stakeholders may have different interest in the modeling of the business ethics. For example, the creditors may be only interested in protecting the moral ethics related to the overall provision of credits to customers. Likewise, the employees may be interested in their own moral ethics that they have established to guide their lives rather than those of the company (Hoffman, 1994). Stakeholders are collectively interested in helping the company distinguish between right and wrong morals of doing business. In oversea business, stakeholders are interested in so many ethical aspects of transacting business. Some of the areas where stakeholders are interested including fair remuneration structure, the social responsibility, creating of new business opportunities that support the community, expansion of the business line or operations, development and renovation of infrastructure, and fair pricing of products and services amongst other areas. All these issues form the basic stakeholder interests in oversea business ethics. However, there are other more considerations that the stakeholders are interested in. These include the issues of gender balance and representation, accommodation of people with disability, strict adherence of the country’s laws, and other vices such as child labor, nepotism, tribalism, racism, favoritisms, and prejudice (Crane & Matten, 2007). In oversea, the main interest of stakeholder is to help the business community distinguish between wrong and right ways of transacting business. This collectively involves helping the business to make the right choices in all their business transactions and operative activities. By doing this, the stakeholders are ideally interested in helping businesses identify and distinguish ethical and unethical business practices. Identification of unethical business practices relatively not an easy task because of the cultural diversity and inherent differences in business processes. The main challenge is that some issues might be considered unethical in a given area while, in other areas, it is considered ethical. Therefore, the primary concern of stakeholder is to help business properly create a balance that would help eh company transact its business in a moral acceptable manner (Bhatia, 2004). The stakeholders are also interested in defining the boundaries of good ethical business practices. Although this is very important, creating a clearly defining boundary is not an easy task. This is one of the worst challenges that stakeholders are experiencing in their daily endeavors of making business processes ‘morally correct.’ The dynamic nature of cultural and business practices is a major reason why it becomes challenging stakeholders to create clear defining boundaries between wrong and right ethical practices in business. Everything in cultural and business environment stands to change with time. Even the ethical business practices that are currently morally accepted have evolved over time. Nothing remains static in both business and culture. Despite these challenges, the oversea business stakeholders are determined to steadfast to create morally acceptable business environment (Bredeson, 2011). By being driven by an inner desire for good ethical practices in business, the stakeholders are mostly interested in the fair treatment of employees. Good business ethics involves fair treatment of employees at all times. The stakeholders are thus pushing the companies to create good working environment for its employees. Some of the considerations made include good remuneration structure, good welfare, and social well being of every employee. It is considered that employees become more productive if their welfare is well catered for. By receiving good treatment and remunerations, the employees respond by increasing their productivity, which is very good for the business. Fair treatment of employee is another significant area of interest that stakeholder takes very seriously. Every employee should be treated with fairness and respect. In oversea, the stakeholders of companies are also interested in minimizing any likely harm to the environment. They pursue companies to work in a way that friendly to the environment and the community at large. Therefore, operations of the businesses are expected to social responsible, taking care of the life-supporting natural environment. Social responsibility is not only a thing of the oversea companies. The world over, companies are expected to be socially responsible in their operations. This is one of the major interests of every business ethic stakeholder all over the world. There are many other areas where the stakeholders have strong interested in developing good business ethics (Hoffman, 1994). Stakeholders’ sources of influence The power of stakeholder in any kind of business cannot be underestimated. Every stakeholder has high potential of influencing the business. This is true in the oversea business ethics. The main concern is where the stakeholders derive their influence that they can determine business operation. Stakeholders are interested in creating value-based activities that have potential of creating value for every involved partner. This is the main reason why stakeholders have very strong influence in the business. Secondly, all stakeholders fight for creating value for one another. Therefore, no one stakeholder can be thought to have insignificant influence in the business transaction processes (Crane & Matten, 2007). Companies generally agree that their success depends on satisfying the needs of their stakeholders. For example, if the needs and interest of the customer re not met, then the company has the minimal likelihood of meeting its short term and long-term goals. The same applies to the interests of creditors, shareholders, suppliers, employees, and managers amongst other stakeholders. Satisfying the stakeholders’ interest is very vital to the business in both its long term and short term success of its operations. For example, in case a business is unable to satisfy its customers special needs, then its existence in the near future might fail. This shows just how critical the stakeholders’ interests are very important to the company. It does not matter irrespective of the type of company. Every stakeholder has a particular area of interest that it directly influences. For instance, the trade unions are interested in employees’ welfare and remunerations, the creditors are interested in credit repayments, the government is interested in compliance with rules and regulations amongst other types of stakeholders. Every area represented by the stakeholder directly affects the company on how it transacts its business. The stakeholders’ influences are interrelated and dependent. They derive their influence from their ability to control their areas of interest, which in return directly affect the way the company conducts its business with other people (Weiss, 2008). Lastly, stakeholders derive their influence from their ability to control the decision making process. In addition, stakeholders have greater ability to facilitate the implementation of various business processes. For example, the employees carry out the daily business operations. The creditors, on the other hand, have the power to approve or deny the company its credit facilities. With these powers in their hand, the stakeholders become very important players in the business transaction processes. This makes them have substantial influence in the overall business transactions. Recommendations to stakeholders Stakeholders in business ethics may do a number of things to help maximize their influence. This majorly depends on the type of the stakeholder being addressed. For instance, the employees may have several different options as we shall discover that may help them maximize their influence in the business ethics. Despite the availability of different options, the starting point is always the understating of ethics. To examine correctly business ethics, the employees must first understand the concept of ethics as it relates to business and the community. Employees as stakeholder have the dilemma of balancing between their own ethical interest and those of the employees. Proper understating of the concept of ethics may help the employees distinguish between their own ethical interest and those of the company (Zimmerli, Richter, & Holzinger, 2007). Secondly, the employees need to examine whether the business welcome and accept the ethic rules by which they have chosen to guide their lives. The conflict is always between the employee’s personal codes of ethics and those established by the company. When there is a conflict, will the company respect the employee codes of ethic or simply thrash them. To overcome this conflict, the employee may realign his or her codes of ethics to match those of the company where necessary. However, there is a serious challenge in accomplishing this requirement because some employees can be too rigid. The values that employees attach to their personal ethical standard may make them rigid in accepting any change (Weiss, 2008). Companies are known to be rigid with their ethical codes. However, they can do something when their ethics affects the employees. Companies may adopt a mediation approach in handling this conflict when it arises. They should not accept to lose a valuable employ just because of ethical issues. For example, companies may adopt a laissez-faire kind of approach when dealing with business approach. Secondly, companies should be very flexible in dealing with issues of business ethics. They should create codes of ethics that is able to recognize and accommodate each cultural background of the employees. However, this might be detrimental to the business if it is not controlled. Whatever the approach the company undertakes, it must uphold the business image and help create strong morals in doing the business (Coady & Sampford, 1993). Companies may also consider changing norms to deal with the ethical practices. This may be the easiest approaches that can be adopted by companies. Companies should also put mechanisms that can enable them manage their behavior and practices from within. The need to solve ethical issues in business is very important. However, the companies do not need to sacrifice the important business reputations and principles for some short gains. Therefore, companies should be strategic and critical in their decision-making. Conclusion It is important to appreciate that modeling business ethics is not an easy task though. This is due to the many considerations that need to be made and the diversity in cultural practices and business environment all over the world. In oversea, this process has evolved over time to come up with the modern morally accepted business ethics that most companies are following. Law is usually the starting point for any business in definition good business ethics. There are practices, whether in business or not, that the law has morally accepted and established as standard measures of accepted practices I the community. The business can rake a leaf from these legally acceptable practices to help them define their own statement of business ethics. The laws remain to the reliable guide in defining the business ethics (Bredeson, 2011). To be morally accepted with the community, business must follow certain relevant codes of practices that the society expects of them. The business environment has significantly changed. Several decades ago, business ethics was not of major concern to people, customers, stakeholders, government, and community at large. However, that perception is long gone. Nowadays, ethics is one of the most important considerations that every business must make. The interest of transacting business has evolved from sole profitability to caring for the community and the life-supporting environment. The moral business ethics principles require businesses to make some sacrifices in protecting the community, the environment, and its employees. The modern day companies have created voluntary codes of practices that are used to regulate their practices in the industry. The companies heavily depend on their stakeholders when making these codes of ethics. They consult the employees, the government, and local communities in order to make the right code of ethics that would make their business accepted in the community. Business ethics also entails aligning the business operations to the country’s established laws. Companies know that their operations will be affected if they do not align their business in accordance with the national laws. The idea of business ethic has revolutionized the business industry due to its many benefits. Industries that have welcomed and put in place perfect codes of ethic for their buskins have greatly benefitted (Malachowski, 2001). References Bhatia, S. K. (2004). Business Ethics and Corporate Governance. London UK: Deep & Deep Publications. Bredeson, D. (2011). Applied Business Ethics: A Skills-Based Approach. New York: Cengage Learning. Coady, C. A., & Sampford, C. (1993). Business, Ethics, and the Law. Southampton: Federation Press. Crane, A., & Matten, D. (2007). Business Ethics: Managing Corporate Citizenship and Sustainability in the Age of Globalization. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hoffman, M. W. (1994). Emerging global business ethics. Washington DC: Quorum Books. Malachowski, A. R. (2001). Business Ethics: Critical Perspectives on Business and Management. London: Taylor & Francis. Weiss, J. (2008). Business Ethics: A Stakeholder and Issues Management Approach. Marryland: Cengage Learning. Zimmerli, W. C., Richter, K., & Holzinger, M. (2007). Corporate Ethics and Corporate Governance. Chicago: Springer. Read More