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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.  
 

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Legal systems provide a framework to identify what is doable and what is not. But a legal right may 
not always mean that the results of an action would be ethically right.  
 
Ethics impose a higher standard that identifies a multitude of stakeholders beyond just suppliers, 
customers, and employees. Business ethics is hence a set of professional practices and standards, 
which emphasise the principles of honesty and duty to the business and the general public.  
 
Now ethics is a vast subject with different frameworks and research information. But why is 
business ethics important? What are the benefits of doing businesses ethically? How can a 
company behave ethically? Let's find answers to these questions next.  
 
Speaker: Babu Vittal 
 
At a broad level, ethical business behaviour facilitates and promotes good for the society, improves 
profitability, fosters business relations and employee productivity.  
 
The concept of business ethics has come to mean various things to various people. But in general, 
it's a tool that is used to identify what is right or wrong at the workplace, and it's used to do what is 
right.  
 
It's also generally viewed that good business ethics promote good business. Every day, there are 
several situations that a company, that is, it's managers and employees come across where they're 
faced with ethical issues.  
 
Some of these major ethical issues can crop up from conflict of interest. A conflict of interest arises 
when what one person in their own best interest, that's not necessarily fall in the best interest of 
another person or that of the organisation, which they are part of.  
 
Some examples of this include cases where an employee accepts gifts and bribes from a vendor in 
return for a preferential treatment. Or when he unlawfully uses the company's properties are 
confidential information for personal gain.  
 
Another set of ethical issues are associated with honesty and fairness in business practices. A 
business could potentially harm its customers, employees, clients, or competitors knowingly 
through deception, misrepresentation, or discrimination.  
 
For example, preferential hiring of an employee or awarding a contract to a vendor on the grounds 
of personal relationship, etc., are ethical issues where honest and fair approaches have not been 
taken.  
 

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Communication is another important area in which ethical concerns arise. Both internal and external 
communication could pose opportunities to achieve immediate gains by providing false information.  
 
False and misleading advertising, deceptive personal selling tactics, blatant lying to superiors or 
subordinates, etc., are examples of such ethical issues and communication.  
 
So, how does a company ensure that the action it takes when faced with these types of issues are 
ethical or right? It is often said that a firm's value system determines its ethical or unethical 
behaviour.  
 
So, what are values? Values are a set of principles or certain standards of behaviour that are 
regarded as desirable, important and held high esteem by the society.  
 
Values hold a major influence on an organisation's behaviour and attitude and serve as broad 
guidelines in all situations. Common business values could be fairness, honesty, integrity, 
innovation, community development, and so on. 
 

 
 
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.  
 

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Allocating a pre-reserved parking space for the CEO might earn them some brownie points, but will 
leave a majority of the organisation unhappy.  
 
Some well known organisations now adopt a first-come first park model. Some others employ valet 
parking to benefit the majority. This is a fine example of the utilitarian approach of creating the 
greatest good for the greatest number.  
 
Second is the rights approach. This approach focuses on respect for human dignity. It holds that our 
dignity is based on our rights to choose freely how we live our lives and that we have a moral duty 
to respect others in the same way.  
 
So, this approach takes the rights of people affected by our actions or behaviour into consideration 
to determine what is ethical. In other words, this approach pushes us to take the right approach, 
which does not infringe on the rights of others.  
 
Avail non e-commerce company, allocated a room for prayers. Only a few employers offered 
regular prayers during the day and the company already had a severe space crunch when it came 
to occupying its employees. Despite the shortcomings, it decided to respect the individual's needs 
and rights.  
 
Now the third approach is the fairness or justice approach, which has its roots and the teachings of 
the ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle.  
 
He said that equals should be treated equally, and unequal unequally. This approach basically asks 
whether an action taken treats everyone in the same way, or whether it promotes favouritism to 
someone and discrimination to another.  
 
Favouritism gives unjustifiable benefits to some persons more than others, and discrimination 
imposes burden on people who are no different from the rest. The fairness or justice approach 
maintains that both favouritism and discrimination are unjust and wrong.  
 
To give you an example, how do you plan a holiday calendar in India without favouring or 
disrespecting any of the hundreds of religions and sections?  
 
A fast and an upcoming start-up with a $50 million valuation and over 250 employees had this 
dilemma. Some of its employees complained that the company's public holiday list for a year was 
too lenient towards one particular religion’s beliefs.  
 
The management took cognizance of this. From the following year, the employees were asked to 
vote their preferences from a list of all possible public holidays in the country. This fair approach 

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maintains that everyone's views are considered instead of a small team deciding the holidays for 
everyone.  
 
The next approach, which is the common good approach such as that ethical actions are those that 
benefit all members of the community.  
 
This approach focuses on ensuring that the social policies, systems, institutions and environment on 
which we are dependent are beneficial to everyone.  
 
Examples of goods that are common to all could be, affordable healthcare, non-corrupt systems, 
effective public safety, and unpolluted environment and so on. Business action should be such that 
they maximise common goods.  
 
The last of the sources is the virtue approach. This is an ancient approach to ethics, which says that 
our actions need to be consistent with certain ideal virtues, such as honesty, compassion, love, 
generosity, tolerance, integrity, fairness, courage, and so on. This approach maintains that.  
 
When a business is dealing with a problem, it should take an action that promotes the development 
of these ideals or virtues in the organisation.  
 
You might have seen a notice in some restaurant which says, if you don't get your receipt, your 
meal is free. The online grocery delivery company, Big Basket, has a no questions asked policy, that 
if the delivered items are not fresh, they refund the order value.  
 
Several Courier companies also promised that if the delivered package is damaged, we will refund. 
These are some examples of the virtue approach, which gives us an indication about how these 
organisations follow their virtues or principles to the core. These principles can get a business to 
distinguish between right and wrong, and then make the right choice. 
 

 
 
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.  
 

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At the heart of an ethics program is a formal code of conduct. A formal code of conduct is a written 
document, which clearly specifies what is acceptable or unacceptable behaviour at the workplace, 
and beyond when the employees represent the company outside.  
 
It is usually set up by the HR department with the assistance of legal team. The code typically 
consists of organisation statement of values, a professional code of conduct, and the code of ethics, 
which it wants each employee to follow.  
 
A well-structured code of business ethics is just as important as a detailed marketing plan, a solid 
financial strategy or an organised business plan.  
 
Every time a new business is launched anywhere in the world, whether it's a one man company or a 
multinational corporation, the owners should adopt a code of ethics.  
 
For small businesses, this code might be unwritten or not even discussed and decided upon. A 
code of ethics depending upon the beliefs and values of the organisation is always important and 
must be set up and internalised by every employee, to ensure that the company does not indulge in 
practices that raises questions about its integrity.  
 
The code of conduct should also specify the consequences of possible violations of these policies 
at the workplace and beyond.  
 
A sample code of conduct will cover the company's ethical policies, an harassment or discrimination 
at the workplace, fairness and equality of opportunity, payments, gifts, government relations, usage 
of company property and so on.  
 
The next step is to establish an effective ethical communication system. Such a system will hele the 
responsible teams to communicate the organisation values and standards of ethical conduct, and 
also the company's policies on various fronts to all employees.  
 
Employees will also get a proper channel to get guidance and answers to the queries on policies 
and compliances specified by the company.  
 
There are several ways to communicate this information through talks, meetings, online discussion 
forums, noticeboard, posters, newsletters, and so on.  
 
It's imperative that the top management takes measures to communicate the code of conduct to 
employees as well.  
 
A proper ethics training program conducted in-house or by external trainer is often seen to be the 
more effective than the regular modes of communication. 

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Support and high involvement of senior management is extremely important for such training 
programs to succeed.  
 
Infosys, for example, has a course on company values and policies that every new employee is 
mandated to attend during the first week of January.  
 
The HR team also facilitates a regular training on ethical practices for the employees through 
interactive classroom workshops and mandatory online courses.  
 
Every company should also identify certain ethics officers from among their employees and set up 
an ethics office or a committee.  
 
These officers and committees will be responsible for defining, implementing and communicating 
the ethics policies among employees of the organisation.  
 
The committee will have the authority to monitor and audit different activities occurring across the 
organisation, report them and take disciplinary action on violation of company's code of conduct.  
 
They will also need to ensure that compliances to government regulations are met. Ethics officers 
and committee members should have a reputation for being credible, honest, and responsible 
employees and citizens.  
 
To avoid any judgment biases, many large corporates appoint external independent persons with 
sound legal knowledge to preside over ethics committee.  
 
Another important duty of such an officer or committee is to review and update the code of conduct 
from time to time to include new and relevant policies. 
 

 
 
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.  
 

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So, the objective of corporate social responsibility is to enable an organisation to embrace these 
different responsibilities.  
 
It encourages companies to create a positive impact through its activities related to the 
environment, consumers, employees, vendors, communities, and all such stakeholders in the 
ecosystem. And thereby become sustainable in the long-term.  
 
There are several globally recognised guidelines, frameworks and tools that enables organisation 
to create sustainable business strategies with respect to their social responsibility.  
 
For example, the human guiding principles on business and human rights, which consists of 31 
principles on human rights, specifies that it's the duty of the state, that's the government, to protect 
human rights.  
 
It's the corporates responsibility to respect human rights. And these bodies need to provide access 
to remedial measures to the victims of business-related abuses.  
 
The organisation for economic cooperation and development has developed the OECD guidelines 
for multinational enterprises.  
 
This offers a comprehensive code of conduct designed to guide enterprises in matters of 
corruption, oversee investments, and dealing with foreign supplies and trade unions in the areas of 
environmental protection.  
 
Another important set of guidelines regarding the provision of minimum social standards around the 
world is provided by international labour organisation.  
 
Their guidelines aim to prevent companies from exploiting workers around the world and gaining 
competitive advantages. The ILOs mission is to eliminate forced labor and child labor, and the 
discrimination with respect to employment. 
 
Starbucks, the global coffee maker is well-known for its commitment to sustainability and 
community development. It has certain guidelines defined under the name Cafe practices, which 
ensures environmental leadership, product quality and economic accountability.  
 
It has created a global network of successful farmers. And today 99% of its coffee is ethically 
sourced. It has also set up programs to enable its partners and employees to go to college.  
 
Starbucks employs refugees in more than 75 countries, providing them a livelihood. Its employees 
have also contributed millions of hours in community service. It also partners with several NGOs, 
including Ethos Water, which is known to provide water for over a billion people. 

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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.  
 

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And to implement their CSR policies, these companies should spend at least 2% of the average net 
profits made in the proceeding three financial years in every financial year. This amount can be 
invested only in India.  
 
A CSR committee should evaluate and choose the right partners and NGOs for implementing the 
identified projects. A company can choose to implement CSR directly or through its own non-profit 
foundations.  
 
Several for-profit companies have also come up now who act as agencies that implement and 
report CSR activities on behalf of large corporates.  
 
So, why should a company take CSR policy seriously? What are its benefits? For, one, it helps 
create a better public image for the company. This positive brand image will further help it stay 
afloat in crisis situation.  
 
CSR also generates better media coverage opportunities. To give you an example, ITC Savlon 
brand came up with an innovative product to improve, and hygiene among children in rural India.  
 
They found that school children still use chalks and slates to study, and hence, created an 
innovative chalk-stick infused with soap. So, when the kids go to wash their hands before having 
lunch, the chalk powder on their hands automatically turns into soap foam.  
 
This campaign was widely covered by national and regional newspapers and on social channels, 
sending out a strong message of Savlon's commitment to developing India's rural regions.  
 
The brand is now providing over a million students with free chalk-sticks every day in association 
with an NGO, Akshaya Patra.  
 
A good CSR strategy will also boost employee engagement and help the HR team hire better 
employees and retain them longer.  
 
At Shopclues, for example, the CSR team is comprised of employees who are committed to 
bringing about positive change in the lives of others.  
 
They in turn encourage other employees to spend their time and resources actively in community 
outreach programs, focused on education for underprivileged children, and skill development for 
youth.  
 
A strong focus on CSR will also help to attain and retain investors who value the sustainability 
quotient of a business.  
 

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Taking the example of Shopclues again, it identified that community development will be at the 
heart of its activities. Across the length and breadth of India, there are entrepreneurs who do not 
have access to showcase their products or transact beyond a limited geography.  
 
As an online marketplace, the company developed a special program through which it currently 
identifies and generates business for merchandise produced by women entrepreneurs around the 
country. This policy has been able to create a lot of interest among its investors. 
 

 
 
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.  
 

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Through the examples of several organisations, such as Starbucks, the Tata group, ITC, Shopclues 
and others, you identified the benefits of a strong CSR policy and that it provides in the long run. 
With this, we come to an end to this session. I hope you enjoyed it. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

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