Analyze the concept of business ethics and corporate social responsibility A Case Study
Key Learning Outcomes
By the end of the case, students should be able to:
- Understand the meaning of business ethics, corporate social responsibility, and its various concepts such as Code of Conduct, Morality, among others
- Understand the role of business ethics and corporate social responsibility and evaluate how they positively or negatively impact an organization
- Apply business ethics and CSR to real-life organizations
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Ethics are moral principles that govern an organization. The term ethics points out how organizations manage themselves concerning universal moral behaviors and actions. It's about choosing the right action. Ethics are vital to all disciplines of a business such as accounting, human resource management, sales, and marketing, etc. Ethics are vital in the world of businesses because it prescribes the conduct to be followed while doing daily activities. This essay is going to analyze the issues of business ethics and social responsibility.
What is business ethics and why is it important to study? Andrew Crane defines business ethics as the study of how businesses operate, their activities, and decisions where they address the issue of what is right or wrong. A business’s ethics reflect the standard of business used when conducting transactions. They are important because protect the company, enable its growth, save money, and protect people from certain legal repercussions.
Corporate Social Responsibility is the role that an organization or business might take in society which meets its economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic expectations i.e. reducing the carbon that is emitted into society, giving back to the community, and many others. In simple terms when an organization behaves ethically and contributes to the economic development of society, it is socially responsible. The primary aim of CSR in an organization is to take responsibility for its actions and positively impact society through its activities such as; reducing carbon emissions, and carrying out charity work among others. Implementation of CSR has numerous effects on an organization for example it increases customer retention, attracts investment opportunities, etc.
Ethical issues in a business are decisions or activities that are inconsistent with an organization’s ethical standards.
There are quite a number of ethical issues in a business namely; discrimination and harassment, workplace health and safety, social media ethics, privacy, unethical accounting, environmental responsibility, etc., The importance of ethics and social responsibility in business is that they support the company's efforts and struggles to preserve resilient relationships with its customers and employees.