Business Ethics Is All About Your Character

Imagine walking up to a restaurant for an early morning breakfast and before going in, you make a decision to buy a newspaper from one of the various vending machines. However, before you can deposit your coinage, you observed the following:

Two small business owners or possibly businessmen walked up to another newspaper vending machine. One deposited the proper coins and opens the door to take his paid for newspaper. Then he asks his companion if he would like one as well? A second newspaper is removed without payment. The companion then jokes about receiving 2 newspapers for the price of one.

I personally witnessed this scenario. What I did was to take the necessary coins from my own pocketbook and deposit them into the machine. I opened the door and then closed the door without taking a newspaper. The two small business owners or executives now stared at me in disbelief.

As I approached the restaurant door, one of the businessmen opened the door, but he could not look me in the eyes. He knew he did wrong, but he thought that no one else would see. And he probably else thought that everyone else does it so why not?

Business ethics is all about character. And character is all about doing the right thing when no one else is looking.

I call this self leadership because if you cannot lead yourself well by demonstrating character when no one else is looking how can you lead others?

One of the most consistent complaints that I hear from small business owners is about the lack of work ethics such as employees who do not give an hour of work for an hour of pay. Yet, how many of their executives, supervisors and managers are doing the same thing?

Possibly, these two small business owners thought that rank had its privileges or that they had already paid their fair share? Earning a certain position does merit some additional benefits, but rank does not give permission to steal, to be disrespectful, to be unethical.

Given that our actions are open to everyone to see and hear, we in the business world must be consistently executing the right actions through our work ethics demonstrated by our self leadership skills. For failure to do so, will only cause us harm sometime down the road or the path to the restaurant door when we fail to notice who is observing our business ethics.

Ethics In Business

Ethics in business is a behavior in which a business is attached to its daily connections with the world. Business ethics at workplace not only applies to the interaction of the business to the world but also to one-on-one dealing with every single customer.

Different businesses have different code of ethics, although for every business it is imperative and necessary to have good ethics in business. Business ethics will examine the ethical principles and moral or ethical problems which will arise from time to time in a business environment.

Business ethics are of both discipline, normative and a descriptive discipline. Normative discipline is for corporate practice and for career specialization and descriptive approaches are taken for academia. One of the aims of business ethics in workplace is to determine the fundamental purposes of a company.

The code of business ethics is necessary to define acceptable behaviors, to promote high standard of practice, to provide a scale for members to use self evaluation, to establish a structure for professional behavior and responsibilities, as a medium for occupational identity and occupational maturity. A wide range of business practices and procedures are covered by the code of business ethics. Those who violate the business code ethics are subjected to disciplinary action which also includes termination of the employment.

Business code ethics are in compliance with laws, rules and regulations and the employees should respect the code of business ethics. Most of the companies have formulated internal policies with respect to the ethical conduct of the employees and these policies can be simple catchphrases in a wide and highly generalized language. Sometimes these policies can be more detailed to contain specific requirements and these are also meant to identify the company’s or business expectations of the employees and to provide guidance to handle more common ethical problems that may arise in the course of doing a business.