Ethics and Sustainability in Business
Ethics in business is considered to be an important aspect for sustaining business for future. As a matter of fact, the most of the firms formulates code of conducts with the purpose to retain the standards of the products and services and formulating an environmental stewardship in order to increase the market value of that company. It can be argued that ethics and social responsibly are identified as a strategic step for the organisations to continue its business flawlessly. Moreover, the ethic is also associated with generating positivism towards the employees in order to reduce employee turnover and incorporate more creativity and innovation. On the basis of this understanding, the aim of this essay is to create an understanding regarding the impact of the ethics and sustainability in organisational culture. Moreover, the essay also encapsulates a thorough study of the recent peer reviewed articles and literatures to get a glimpse of the empirical point of view in this context.
According to Bishop (2013) ethics and sustainability are considered to be the cornerstone of the foundation of a good business environment (p. 636). It is comprised with the concept of a moral standpoint that most of the business organisations should or must imply in their organisational framework. As a matter of fact, the role of the ethics in business is very much dynamic and associated with the good business environment that a company should follow. For an example, the code of conducts in the name of ethics helps to maintain a good business environment inside the organisations. It resembles with the idea to secure the interests of the employees by putting more emphasis on the workplace environment and prohibiting illegal practices like the discrimination, exploitation and ensuring workplace health and safety. As far as the study of Beeri (2013) is concerned it can be argued that the role of the ethics in business identifies the responsibility of the organisations towards its employees (p. 75).
Moreover, ethics is also related to formulate a sustainability value and standard that indicates the role of the company in developing the community and its social orientation. In this regard, Amini & Bienstock (2014) argued that the primary focus of the organisations are extensively relied upon yielding profit as far as it can (p. 14). However, the ethical considerations stimulate this process by establishing a social duty of the organisations. As a result of that social responsibility has become a strategic measure for the organisations in order to ensure their future responsibility. In the research conducted by Baumgartner (2014) it was seen that most of the organisations are keen to develop a suitability effort to flaunt their responsibility as a social entity (p. 260). In this context, sustainability is associated with the corporate sustainability and the environmental sustainability. As far as Bishop (2013) is concerned, corporate sustainability deals with the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and the friendly attitude towards the customers (p. 633). On the other hand, the environmental sustainability of any organisation is resembled with the idea of environmental stewardship. In other words, the environmental responsibility is associated with the positive impact of the organisation on environment by the means of reducing greenhouse gas emission, managing wastes, reusable technologies and saving energies.
Role of Ethics in Business
The CSR is defined as a strategic step taken by the company by organising social orientation in terms of incorporating the society or the neighbouring people in course of the organisational framework. Baumgartner (2014) advocated that for ensuring CSR the organisations put emphasis on organising social campaigns and programs where the local and interested people can participate (p. 270). Moreover, often the companies coordinates some community development programs for the society. The purpose behind these strategic steps is to develop a better image of the organisation so that in return it will maximise the customers. In course of this the future of the company will also be secured by yielding more profit and prosperity for the organisation. In addition to this, making effort to create better relationship with the customers the organisation keep on going to introduce innovative marketing strategies and ideas to lure the consumers robustly. In fact, it is pertinent for the organisation to maximise the customers in order to expand its business globally (Amini & Bienstock, 2014, p. 15). In this context, the consumers’ behaviour also has big role to play. The customers keep an eye on the image or value of the brand and in case of any disputes regarding the brand, it faces detrimental impact on the course of the market orientation. Therefore, the companies are always willing to check their market capitalisation with the help of establishing ethics and sustainability.
Besides this, the role of the environmental sustainability also plays a major role in achieving the standards of ethics and sustainability in the organisation. Environmental sustainability is coincided with the activities such as steps taken by the organisations in order to protect the environment from further degradation. There is no doubt that due to impact of the globalisation the activities of the companies has been increased in a rapid pace. In response to this, the companies are only tried to expand their market capitulation and generate more profit by harming the environment intensely (Bishop, 2013, p. 634). For an example, indiscriminate use of the resources and energies costs shortage in the resource and as a result of that the future generation will face severe problem and to some extent facing a catastrophe that erase the human kind. Therefore, the organisations express their concern on environmental sustainability with the purpose of fostering a better and healthy world. Therefore, using sustainability measures in terms of reducing the energy consumption by innovating new energy efficient machines and sustainability campaigns are very relevant for the business occupation of the companies.
Corporate Sustainability and Environmental Sustainability
However, a number of articles are showing the negative impact of the ethics and sustainability on the business environment. As far as Popescu (2016) is concerned, the implementation of sustainability devices increase the expenses of the companies (p. 125). As a matter o fact, the small and medium scale enterprises are suffering with huge loss due to enforcing sustainability framework. Moreover, the SMEs do not have enough capital to implement new technologies in course of the market orientation. As a result of that it will be negative for them to continue business in the high competitive market situation. Moreover, Baumann-Pauly et al., (2013) advocated that the ethical considerations in business creates problem due to overpower of bureaucracy (p. 700). The bureaucratic restrictions restrained the natural growth of the business activities and as a result of that the poor and small organisations are failed to expand their business extensively.
Moreover, many researchers have criticised the role and relevance of CSR in business. It was argued that CSR was just an eyewash on behalf of the companies to divert the mind of the government on other matters. As a matter of fact, Popescu (2016) argued that the prevalence of the legislation would increase the vocalisation of the concerns over environmental sustainability (p. 127). In reality the corporate organisations do not have any actual concern regarding the damages they caused over environment. Therefore, the legislative frameworks and the importance of the code of ethics become futile and irrelevant as the companies intentionally or due to lack of perception regarding environmental issues damage the ecology badly.
In addition to this, the role and importance of code of conducts in the shape of ethical standpoint is also under the scrutiny of some scholars. Many researches argued about the vitality of the code of conducts in business. According to Baumann-Pauly et al. (2013) the code of conducts actually have no impact on the business corporates (p. 694). The giant companies hold enough power to mould the government organisations into their support. Furthermore, the moral ethics and code of conducts followed by the companies fail to convince the people about the benevolent characteristic of it. Besides this, the wordings and choice of terminologies are very hard to understand and beyond the understanding of the common people. As a result of that the commoners are remain in dark about such code of conducts that any company follows or not. In his article, Baumann-Pauly et al. (2013) tried to draw a line between the relevance of code of conducts and the role of the ethics in business by giving examples about the Volkswagen emission scandal where the car manufacturer giant deliberately used illegal devices to make it seems like their cars followed the emission guidelines (p. 701). This kind of issues are quiet normal for the big companies and the role of code of conduct is not applicable to them.
The above discussion tried to point out the relevance of the ethics and sustainability in corporate culture by putting emphasis on the peer reviewed articles. The articles advocated their perception of the scholarly articles regarding the role of ethics and sustainability in business culture. In this context, it can be argued that most of the articles defined ethics and sustainability as the cornerstone of business operations of corporate organisations. However, a few articles still remained sceptical about the relevance and importance of ethics and sustainability in business. They questioned the existence of such measures when the giant organisations operates beyond the code of conducts and those companies do not care for the existence of any sustainability measures. Therefore, it can be concluded that the essay is strictly put emphasis on the scholarly articles to get a clear picture of the relevance of ethics and sustainability in present day business and it can be argued that despite of having enough criticism, sustainability and ethics has to be installed in the business.
Reference
Amini, management. & Bienstock, C.C., (2014). Corporate sustainability: an integrative definition and framework to evaluate corporate practice and guide academic research. Journal of Cleaner Production, 76, pp.12-19. [Retrieved from https://www.pmir.it/fileCaricati/1/Amini%20and%20Bienstock%20(2014).pdf]
Baumann-Pauly, D., Wickert, C., Spence, L.J. & Scherer, A.G., (2013). Organizing corporate social responsibility in small and large firms: Size matters. Journal of Business Ethics, 115(4), pp.693-705. [Retrieved from https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/219450/1/Baumann-Pauly%20et%20al_forthcoming.pdf]
Baumgartner, R.J., (2014). Managing corporate sustainability and CSR: A conceptual framework combining values, strategies and instruments contributing to sustainable development. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 21(5), pp.258-271. [Retrieved from https://www.pmir.it/fileCaricati/1/Baumgartner%20(2014).pdf]
Beeri, I., Dayan, R., Vigoda-Gadot, E., & Werner, S. B. (2013). Advancing ethics in public organizations: The impact of an ethics program on employees’ perceptions and behaviors in a regional council. Journal of Business Ethics, 112(1), 59-78. [Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Eran_Vigoda-Gadot/publication/257541752_Advancing_Ethics_in_Public_Organizations_The_Impact_of_an_Ethics_Program_on_Employees%27_Perceptions_and_Behaviors_in_a_Regional_Council/links/0046353c2135aa45f9000000.pdf]
Bishop, W.H., (2013). The role of ethics in 21st century organizations. Journal of Business Ethics, 118(3), pp.635-637. [Retrieved from https://www.regent.edu/acad/global/publications/lao/issue_11/pdf/brimmer.pdf]
Popescu, A.I., (2016) In Brief: Pros and Cons of Corporate Codes of Conduct. Editorial Board, pp.125-130. [Retrieved from https://www.jopafl.com/uploads/issue9/PROS_AND_CONS_OF_CORPORATE_CODES_OF_CONDUCT.pdf]
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