Introduction
Business Ethics in business field focus on ensuring that business operators keep to the established policies that guide the production, distribution and sales of good and services. Benefits accrued from business ethics significantly outweigh their demerits. It is with this respect that the paper aims at giving some explanations as to why business operators ought to ensure that they act ethically (Bowie 1999).
Benefits of business ethics
Business ethics require business operators to ensure that they stick to production regulations so as to offer quality products. This in return cost businesses in terms of time and resources used in production and sales of quality products. Nevertheless, the move has numerous benefits to businesses than the perceived demerits. One of the benefits gotten from this is that business reputation is boosted. Hence a business that acts ethically is capable of increasing its competitive edge. Most customers wish to deal with businesses that they are guaranteed about the quality of the products they sell. Acting ethically helps a business satisfy its customers thus winning their loyalty (Braybrooke1983). Business ethics helps an organization reinforce its brand image in the market leading to it increasing its market share.
It is not only the organizational employees that are required to act ethically. Rather, even the business’s management team and shareholders are obliged to act ethically. The relationship between business’s stakeholders needs to be favorable. This implies that the business have to incur extra cost with respect to rewarding its employees and other benefits. Despite this being perceived to be costly, it has eminent benefits to the business organizations. The move strengthens the relationship between the different members in the organization. Consequently, teamwork in the business becomes strong. With this cooperation, employees are able to share ideas, come up with new innovations thus boosting their productivity (Madsen & Shafritz 1990).
Despite business ethics being costly to an organization, it helps business operators avoid cases of having to pay huge sums of money. As organizations keep to their corporate social responsibilities, they avoid chances of violating the established regulations such as paying tax and ensuring that they offer quality products. Violating these regulations may subject a business to heavy punishment or even its right to operate being revoked. In the end, such an organization may end up not achieving its objectives (Cavanaugh & McGovern 1988).
Ways of encouraging business to act ethically
There are numerous business requirements that are ignored by operators and amount to ethical conducts. Some of them lead to organizations ruining their reputation thus losing customers. They also affect cooperation between employees in a business leading to high employee turnover and low productivity. There are varied ways through which organizations can be encouraged to act ethically. These include encouraging business operators to ensure that they always welcome opinions from both the employees and customers. Maintaining an open minded environment within an organization leads to all stakeholders feeling to be considered. Consequently, customers become loyal to the business while employees feel to be valued. In the end, a business embracing an open minded environment improves its sales volume.
It is vital that business operators strive at ensuring that they meet all their obligations. This may appear to be costly with respect to time and resources, but it goes a long way in helping the company win customer trust. In case of any customer complaints, it is the duty of business operators to make a follow up and identify what went wrong. This should then be followed by a strategy to correct the mess and also assure the customers that such a problem will never occur in future. It will make customers see that the business is considerate thus changing their mind if they had decided to terminate their relationship with the business (Moment 2010).
Documents stored and issued by business organizations significantly reflect their actions. By looking at advertisements published by an organization, one can easily identify if the business acts ethically or not. Hence, business operators ought to always go through their documents to ensure that they truly reflect their operations and conducts before there are issued to public or other business partners. Issuing documents that are unprofessionally printed may affect the image of an organization. Participating in social responsibilities goes a long way in helping an organization expand its market coverage (Freeman 1991). Funding community based projects may seem costly to a business organization. However, it is a superior way of winning public attention thus increasing the market share.
Conclusion
Business ethics entails ensuring that a business obeys the established regulation for producing, distributing and selling products and services. It may appear costly in the mind of business operators but not until they have embraced it that they discover its tremendous benefits. Such acts as treating employees and customers with respect helps in improving teamwork within an organization and winning customer loyalty. Complying with established business regulations helps an organization escape being punished for being defiant thus guaranteeing its continued operations.
Reference List
Bowie, N. E., 1999. Business Ethics. New York: Blackwell Pub.
Braybrooke, D., 1983. Ethics in the World of Business. Totowa, NJ: Rowman.
Cavanaugh, G. F. & McGovern, A. F., 1988. Ethical Dilemmas in the Modern Corporation. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Freeman, E. R., 1991. Business Ethics: The State of the Art. New York: Oxford University Press.
Madsen, P. & Shafritz, J. M., 1990. Essentials of Business Ethics. New York: Meridian.
Moment, R., 2010. 7 principles of admirable business ethics. Web.