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Note: This transcription document is a text version of the upGrad videos present in this session. It is
not meant to be read independently, but can be used to complement your video watching
experience.
Speaker: Dhaval Doshi
Managing a business requires a lot of knowledge and experience. You need knowledge of
accounting, finance, marketing, and many other relevant skills.
However, it is equally important for you to acknowledge how you operate your business. Since this
is not only a reflection of you, but it has an impact on your neighbours and the larger community as
well.
While staying within the boundaries of an ever-changing list of business laws is necessary for
running a successful business, it is not always adequate. Businesses and managers must also
recognise the additional expectations and limitations placed upon them by business ethics.
Business ethics STEM from the principles and values, which define what is right and wrong in a
wider sense. To give you a better idea, let's say you work for an it company that creates mobile
applications.
Now saying that you should consider the social consequences of the software you create does not
have much to do with the law, but it focuses more on the ethics or the moral code of our society.
On the other hand, saying that your software should not record confidential customer information
has more to deal with the legal compliances.
While the law requires everyone to follow the same path to avoid punishments, ethics can differ
from organisation to organisation or even society to society.
Speaker: Babu Vittal
While the values held by a company will largely affect its behaviour, the organisation can draw
inspiration from several principles that define business ethics, to choose the right decisions every
day.
There are five major sources of ethical standards available, as explained by the multitude of
philosophical studies made on this topic.
The first of these, the utilitarian approach assesses an action in terms of its consequences or
outcomes, that is, the net benefit and cost it poses to all stakeholders. It strives to achieve the
greater good for the greatest number while creating the least amount of harm.
If you work in any of the Metro cities, you'll agree that one of the biggest challenges at your
workplace is to find a parking space for your vehicle.
Most organisations operate from structured buildings with a limited parking area allocated by the
building owner, which could be 8 or 10 slots for every hundred employees. HR and admin managers
are in-charge of taking a call on how to manage this limited space.
Speaker: Babu Vittal
So, now what are the benefits of acting in an ethical way? For one, good ethics helps promote a
strong public image. An organisation which pays attention to ethical practices can portray a strong
and positive image to the public.
People see such organisations as valuing people more than profit. And that's striving to uphold
integrity and honour in their operations.
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They say to error is human, but to correct an apologise is godly. You might remember the first big
billion-day sale from Flipkart, which didn't go quite as expected.
Customers and news agencies went haywire bashing the brand on social media, accusing them of
false promises and cheap tricks.
However, one thing still stands out from the entire episode and that changed how we saw the
company over the years that followed. It was Sachin and Binny Bansal's email that went out to every
Flipkart user the next day.
There were several things that went wrong that day, unprecedented traffic on the site, greedy
customers, limited stocks with suppliers, and many more.
But instead of blaming anyone or issuing a PR response, the companies' then CEO decided to take
ownership of the failure and to apologise personally to each of their customers.
Such acts that demonstrate integrity help generate a strong public image for a company. A strong
image further helps create market leadership and set standards for the rest of the industry to follow.
Next, it enhances employee growth and retention. An ethical organisation empowers its employees
to face realities, both good and bad, and gain confidence in dealing with complex issues.
Employees will also find more value in staying on with an organisation that is transparent in its
communication and ethical in its dealings.
Practicing business ethics also creates an improved society. When a business applies fairness and
non-discrimination and takes an approach to maximise common goods, it helps them creating a
better world for everyone. Properly planned ethics programs will also help avoid litigation and fines.
Having an ethics policy defined early on will help detect ethical issues and violations so that they
can be reported or addressed on time.
And ethical behaviour will necessarily mean that all the legal requirements are met and policies are
adhered too. This gives reduced opportunity for others to sue the company for its actions or even
non-performance.
Speaker: Dhaval Doshi
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You now have a good understanding of the importance and need for ethics in business scenarios.
While philosophies and theories help differentiate right from wrong, how can an organisation
actually ensure that ethics is practiced day in and day out.
To create an organisation which is ethical, there are certain steps that need to be taken. Let's look
at what those steps are, who needs to take those steps, and how they can be put into effect.
Speaker: Babu Vittal
Ethical or unethical behaviour of individual employees at a workplace is influenced both by their
own moral development and the organisation's culture that is imposed on them.
Peers, managers, subordinates, the reward system, companies' values and policies, and their
implementation, all of these influences the behaviour of an employee.
If you're a person who behaves ethically at your organisation, can I ask you why? Why do you
practice ethics? A few of us may say that we want to be right at all times, be honest to ourselves
and to the world, and achieve certain ideals such as fairness and justice for all.
Now, many of us might say that we have practiced workplace ethics to be a good citizen, to be a
responsible son, daughter, husband, wife, parent or friend. We want to ensure that we are seen as a
good employee by our superiors, a nice person, a good friend, and so on.
However, most of us actually show ethical behaviour at work to avoid a punishment or to receive
some reward such as a promotion at the right time.
This provides some interesting insights into workplace ethics. If not properly guided or regulated,
people are willing to do things that go beyond the limits of morality and humanity.
This has been researched and recorded by many psychologists over the years. What this means is
workplace ethics have to be cultivated over a period of time by setting up certain rigid policies that
influence and regulate employee behaviour.
Many ethically committed organisations assign the task of managing and monitoring ethical
behaviour at all layers of the company to its HR department.
Additionally, companies are appointing dedicated ethics officers and committees to achieve this
objective. A sound ethics program is what the HR department need to develop to ensure that
employees and managers practice business ethics.
Speaker: Dhaval Doshi
So far, we have discussed the importance of ethics in the workplace and how an organisation can
take steps to ensure that its actions are ethical with respect to its employees, customers, and
vendors.
Another important application of ethics on a company's functioning in the larger ecosystem is
defined through corporate social responsibility, also known as CSR.
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In India, traditionally, CSR has been synonymous with philanthropic activities. But is CSR limited to
philanthropy? Why should a company indulge in CSR activities? What are its benefits? Let's take a
deeper look at CSR and its application in India.
Speaker: Babu Vittal
India is a country of many contradictions. On one hand, it has grown to become one of the world's
largest economies, and at the same time, it is still home to a major portion of world's poor, who live
in absolute poverty.
An un-even distribution of the benefits of social and economic growth is believed to be the reason
of this imbalance. And this imbalance is not characteristics of India alone. This is a global issue.
So, does this mean that it's unethical for corporates to function for profits? Should they be
distributing all the profits to economically weak as communism required? Definitely not.
The objective of a business is to maximize profits for its owners. And it would be in fact, be
unethical if the business does not function to achieve that.
So, then where do we draw the line? The term corporate social responsibility became popular in the
last few decades after many multinational corporations adopted the term.
Stakeholders referring to all those on whom the organisation activities have an impact on. Edward
Freeman's highly influential book, Strategic Management, a stakeholder approach from 1984
introduced the concept that companies are members of the social community.
Companies have responsibilities similar to other members of the social ecosystem. And these
responsibilities fall into four major groups, economic responsibility, legal responsibility, ethical
responsibility, and philanthropic responsibility.
These four responsibilities are quite self-explanatory. The fifth responsibility is that of sustainable
development. A famous concept in this regard is the triple bottom line theory.
According to John Ellington, it's author, three bottom lines are the three pieces that an organisation
is responsible to that are, people, planet and profit.
The triple bottom line theory focuses on sustainability and requests that a company should weight
its actions and performance on three independent skills. Economic sustainability, that's profit. Social
sustainability, that's people. And environmental sustainability, that's planet.
Speaker: Babu Vittal
In India, the companies act 2013 introduced the concept of CSR to the forefront and brought in
several new mandates.
CSR is not something new to India. Ever since its inception, corporates such as the Tatas and Birlas
have been known to be involved in helping communities through donations and charity events.
So, CSR in India has traditionally been seen as a philanthropic activity, just like anywhere else. It still
remains with the confines of philanthropy, but has seen a considerable shift towards community
development activities and projects.
With increase in global influencers slowly, several of these projects are getting aligned with
business strategies of the organisations as well.
Some Indian companies that have started community development program with sustainability in
mind are Tata Steel, Mahindra and Mahindra, Tata motors, ITC, Ultra Tech cement, etc. We can
expect a lot more companies to follow soon.
The CSR class within the companies act of 2013 mentioned stakeholders and the need for
integrating an organisation's social, environmental and economic objectives, referring to the triple
bottom line approach.
The provisions of the CSR classes mandatorily applicable to companies with an annual turnover of
thousand crore INR and more, a net worth of 500 crore INR or more, or a net profit of 5 crore INR or
more.
The companies falling under this category are required to do the following activities. One, appoint a
CSR committee to formulate and put a CSR policy into action. And to monitor it from time to time.
The CSR committee should comprise of three or more directors of which at least one is an
independent director.
Next, the company's board should approve the committee's policy, disclose its contents in the
report and publish the details on the company's official website as well.
Speaker: Dhaval Doshi
In this session, you learned about the need for ethics at the workplace and how an ethical business
can bring about positive change in the market, it's industry, the community and the environment
surrounding it.
Business ethics is a set of professional standards, which emphasise the principles of honesty and
duty to the business and the general public.
Ethical dilemmas can arise in several situations and are faced by employees and managers alike.
There are several frameworks which help businesses find out the most ethical step when faced with
such situations.
You learned about some of the most popular theories, such as the utilitarian approach, which
stands for creating the greatest good for the greatest number while generating the least amount of
harm.
Another theory known as the rights approach takes the rights of the people affected by our actions
into consideration to determine what is ethical.
The fairness or justice approach maintains that our actions should treat everyone in the same way,
and it should not promote favouritism to someone and discrimination to another.
Next, the common good approach to ethics suggests that ethical actions are those that benefit all
members of the community. Such benefits could be a better environment for everyone, better
public policies and so on.
And finally, the virtues approach maintains that when a business is dealing with a problem, it should
take an action that promotes the development of certain ideals or virtues in the organisation.
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Some ideal virtues of business should be pursuing are honesty, integrity, compassion, fairness, and
so on. Now, if a business acts ethically by applying these frameworks, what benefits do they
achieve?
You learned through some examples that a strong ethical background will help a business create a
strong public image, enhance its employee growth and retention, avoid unnecessary litigation and
fights and create an improved society all around.
Now that we understood the frameworks for taking ethical steps and its benefits to an organisation,
the next step is to ensure that the organisation rigorously follows ethical practices in its everyday
business.
Developing a comprehensive ethics program is the only solution to this. At the heart of an ethics
program is a formal code of conduct, which consists of the organisation's statement of values, a
professional code of conduct, and a code of ethics, which it wants each employee to follow.
An effective ethical communication system and ethics training programs need to be set up and
promoted by the elected ethics committee. It should also monitor employee actions and take
disciplinary actions whenever required.
Further, you also learned about another important viewpoint of business ethics, which is becoming
increasingly important today, that is, CSR or corporate social responsibility.
The thought process behind this is that a business is not just responsible for its own benefit, but
also to the larger society that it serves.
The five major responsibilities of a business can be coined under, economic responsibility, legal
responsibility, ethical responsibility, philanthropic responsibility, and then a sustainable
development responsibility.
CSR has been practiced in India traditionally as philanthropic activities by companies, large and
small. But the companies act 2013 has focused on bringing everyone together to achieve the
purpose of the common good.
Companies falling under a certain category are required to appoint a CSR committee to formulate
and put a CSR policy into action and monitor it from time to time. This policy should be made public
and at least 2% of the average net profits made in the previous three financial years need to be
spent on CSR in every financial year.