Ethics

Business Ethics: A Quiz with Many Right Answers

You can find various business ethics quizzes around thPick the one answer you think is wrong. This one is different. Each question has only one WRONG answer, doesn’t analyze your answers and tell you where you went wrong. Rather, it is simply intended to raise your ethical consciousness, maybe even stimulate a little discussion between you and your peers or family.

In this quiz, try to pick the answer that is wrong. I hope the “wrong” answers are obvious if you care about business ethics.

Enjoy!

1. My reputation
a. Is only as good as my word
b. Precedes me
c. Once lost is hard to regain
d. Is the legacy I’ll leave behind
e. Doesn’t matter to me.

2. Following my employer’s Code of Ethics
a. Could be important to my success
b. Requires interpretation to get it right
c. Will make me a better leader
d. Is a waste of time
e. Requires a certain level of consciousness and some attention to detail

3. Pointing out ethical transgressions at work
a. Can be awkward
b. Helps raise awareness for us all
c. Is a career ending move
d. Can backfire
e. Could be educational all the way around

4. Keeping the workplace ethical
a. Makes it a better place to work
b. Is hopeless
c. Requires clarity around ethical standards
d. Means top management has to do it
e. Leads to a more profitable company

5. My employer’s ethical reputation
a. Is in the dumps and dropping
b. Reflects on me
c. Is partially set by how I behave
d. Makes a difference in the bottom line
e. To some extent determines whether people will buy our products

6. Accepting gifts from vendors
a. May be fine within limits
b. Should under no conditions affect my willingness to buy from them
c. Has stricter rules in the US than is some other countries
d. Is a great idea to get as much as you can!
e. Should probably be disclosed to the ethics office, particularly if it is valued at over a certain amount

7. I care about business ethics because
a. America’s reputation has suffered recently
b. Good business ethics can restore better profits
c. I don’t want to work somewhere slimy
d. Good business ethics creates a more just workplace
e. They substitute for my complete lack of business ethics.

The wrong answers would likely come from someone who is apathetic and/or cynical. Sometimes, we do feel either of those feelings. However, life is short and the well-lived life is a life of integrity. Living a life of integrity means caring about business ethics.

If you enjoyed taking this quiz, share it with your friends. If you work in an office that cares about ethics, share it at the next staff meeting. Leave it in the lunch room. Pick the one question that you like most and talk about it over beers this weekend. On your commute home, think about what you want to do differently going forward. Send the quiz anonymously to your boss. Keep the discussion going about the importance of ethics in business!

Copyright by Sally Rhys of Coaching for Perspective, July 2008

Sally Rhys, MS, coaches and consults on business ethics. As the former Director, Ethics and Compliance at a $1.5B publicly traded company, her expertise will help you increase both your business knowledge and professionalism. Contact her at http://www.coachingforperspective.com

Your Personal Code of Ethics: How Does it Work in Today’s World?

Each of us carries around within us a personal code of ethics. We may not be conscious of it; we may not deliberately consult it on a daily basis, we may not apply a decision tree against it to make a choice, but it exists. And, at times, it may falter, or we may apply different ethical principles in different situations.

Take a minute to identify your fundamental ethical philosophy. Which of the descriptions below best captures the way you like to operate in the world?

1. Humans have no special place within the world, but are just one of thousands of expressions of life. People have desires and free will and so can alter their nature. However, if one acts unnaturally, it upsets the balance of life. Therefore, one should seek balance in life.
2. Ethics is a practical science; you have to do it, not just think it. This philosopher thought in terms of virtue ethics which has to do with the proper function of a thing. Therefore, the best activity of the soul is to attain a joy in the good life.
3. The responsibility of all people is to help build the ideal society, and if it takes violating the norms of a society to do so, then do it. To some degree, the situation will dictate the proper thing to do at the proper time.
4. There is a single unconditional obligation, and that is to carry out your duty. How you feel when carrying out the action is what is important, although the outcome might not be what you intended.

Now, which statement resonates most with you? Which seems to be the path you travel in living your life?

If you select number 1, your pattern is most aligned with Laozi, a philosopher of ancient China and a key figure in Taoism.

If number 2 rang your chimes, your pattern is most aligned with Aristotle, the Greek who taught that to have a good life, you must live a balanced life and avoid excesses.

If number 3 resonated with you, your pattern is most aligned with Confucius, the Chinese philosopher who emphasized personal and government morality, correctness of social relationships, justice and mercy.

If number 4 makes the most sense to you, your pattern is most aligned with Kant, an 18th century Prussian philosopher.

No matter which philosophy attracts you the most, all are legitimate, honorable ways of being. In fact, you may apply different principles depending on any given situation.

While these are all laudable approaches to life, applying them will likely have different outcomes. For instance, consider the case of Zoe. Zoe has a co-worker, Alice, who was listing more hours worked on her timesheet than was true; she is cheating the company.

To apply the thinking of Kant in this situation, we’d say, “If everybody cheated on their time sheet, no work would get done and the company would be paying for nothing!” Since Zoe is a friend to Alice, she knows that Alice was just abandoned by her husband, and has two kids under four to care for. Day care is proving problematic. With this additional information, you might think about adopting a Confucian standard. This philosophy would encourage you to value helping to build an ideal society, which certainly includes making sure small children are well cared for.

See how applying different ethical standards would guide you to take different action?

Whichever approach makes the most sense to you, explore the strengths and limitations of your preferred approach. Under what circumstances does your approach work best? Under what circumstances would your approach result in unintended, maybe even negative, consequences? How have you consciously applied your philosophy in the past? Has it ever landed you in a hot spot? By the way, note that being in a hot spot may mean that you did exactly the right thing, it is just not well received!

Sometime tomorrow, find an opportunity to practice applying your favored approach very deliberately. It can be a small incident in your daily life. Think about driving in traffic, trash on the streets, standing in a line. What do you learn from the exercise? Knowing that, how will you change your pattern in the future, if at all?

And finally, I encourage you find out more about the thinking and teachings of the thinkers above. You might refine your thinking about how you want to live your life. Online encyclopedias are an easy first step.

Happy philosophizing!

Sally Rhys, MS, coaches and consults on business ethics. As the former Director, Ethics and Compliance at a $1.5B publicly traded company, her expertise will help you increase both your business knowledge and professionalism. Contact her at http://www.coachingforperspective.com

When In Business Remember Your Values And Your Principles

The pressures people face as entrepreneurs can at times become burdensome. You are the boss, the one person within your company that is ultimately responsible for everything that goes on. Sometimes you may feel all alone in the world that makes up your life. And sometimes the pressure can seem overwhelming. Being in business for yourself does not mean living in a perfect world. So when challenges arise and things become difficult remember what your own personal set of values and principles are. They will help to make up who you are and how you want to run your business. Values like honesty, integrity, trust, and treating others like you would like to be treated should not be taken lightly.

In business your values and principles are important and should never be sacrificed for any reason. But they will be put to the test on many occasions. So how might your values be challenged by your business. Let’s start with your employees. Depending on what kind of business you own your employees will come from all walks of life. They will vary in the cultures they come from, age, race, gender, and education levels. And at times they will do things that they should not. How will you handle them? If your business needs them bad enough will you look the other way when they do something wrong? What if they treat other employees badly or try to take advantage of you because they know how badly that you need them. Will you sacrifice your values and principles because you are worried by what would happen if they leave or will you make the right choice and get rid of them.

What if a customer puts you in a compromising position about doing further business with your company? Maybe an employee of theirs demands a kickback or something if you want to continue to receive their business. How will you handle such a situation? Do you risk turning them in knowing it could cost you that customer? You have to ask yourself what will cost you more. Standing up for what you believe in knowing it could hurt your company or giving in knowing it could hurt you. We can always come up with excuses for giving in; it’s taking a stand personally that is hard to do.

The choices you face as you develop and grow your business with be hard. Some will test your principles. They will force you to consider how far you are willing to go to get ahead and make your business a success. So choose carefully because the decisions you make now can affect you greatly in the future. One small exception to your values and principles can lead to bigger exceptions later.

Cash Miller is an experienced entrepreneur and speaker who has spent over a decade as a small business owner. His years of experience in small business cover a variety of topics. If you are looking for more small business help please check out http://www.smallbusinessdelivered.com

Business Ethics: Why They Are Important For a Company and Its Success

Business ethics is an interesting branch of business theory, primarily because of the fact that they are inherently interesting in a market economy. People tend to be extremely distrustful of corporations in market economies and the bigger they are, the worse that problem of trust usually gets. Business ethics therefore are politically charged in many different circumstances and that in turn serves to make them interesting. Aside from this academic interest however, business ethics are also important for a company and its success. Here are some ways in which this is true.

Public Image

It is impossible to discuss business ethics as a branch of academia without taking a look at the relationship between business ethics and public image. Each corporation has a particular public image, which represents the way in which the public views the corporation. Wal-Mart, for example, has a terrible public image. Toyota, on the other hand, has a very positive one. These public images are the result of a number of different things, but they are primarily the result of the way in which a corporation acts with respect to the different things around it.

A corporation’s environmental policy, the way they treat their employees and the way they treat the communities they exist in are all part of their overall behavior and this in turn is the principle factor in determining their public image. As proof of this, you will notice that even though Wal-Mart makes products that have a decent quality and an extremely low price, they still have a negative public image.

Since public image is largely a result of company behavior, business ethics play a large role in determining public image since they determine behavior. And public image is important to success in most cases, which is one of the reasons as to why business ethics are important to a company’s overall success.

Investment

Another reason that business ethics are important is the relationship they have to investment. When a person or an entity is considering investment in a particular stock, there are a number of things they take into account. Aside from the quantitative factors surrounding a company’s profit margin a future prospects, consideration is also given to a particular company from the point of view of the qualitative aspects such as their public image and the products that they happen to sell. All of these things are taken into account before the final investment is made.

Therefore, a company that would like to encourage extra investment is a company that has a strong sense of business ethics. Part of business ethics is responsibility to the investor and for that reason companies with strong reputations in the field of ethical business behavior are also companies that tend to attract more investment from people that are new into the market. Investment is most definitely important to success.

Partnerships

In the business world, joint ventures happen all the time. They happen all the time because they are ultimately of great importance to the bottom lines of businesses. A business can be made or broken on just one joint venture and part of the reason that joint ventures are successful is that they combine the forces of two extremely powerful companies on occasion.

If you want your company to do well in joint ventures, then you need to have good partners. The only way to get good partners is to have a good reputation both in terms of a track record and in terms of your business overall. And of course, the best way to get a good reputation is to ensure that your company has a strong tradition of ethical business behavior.

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Employers Protection Against The Ridiculous

The UK is fast becoming the Health and Safety nightmare of the modern world. There are those who work in the care sector who are not allowed to come into physical contact with the people they care for fear of breaching some health and safety law, there are those in childcare who are not allowed to so much as apply a sticky plaster without a signed waver from the parent.

Of course, to counteract all these nonsense rules we have health and safety training. You can go on a course if you want to be certified to apply plasters to grazes which always comes in handy when you’re working in a playschool. If the teachers are away on health and safety training courses then they have stand in teachers. If the children should graze themselves during this time, there is no need to worry. They will simply call out a parent who can then drop what they are doing at work and run and fix their broken child.

If you think this is crazy then look to the UK’s compensation culture to appoint blame. For fear of being sued in the event of a plaster reaction and a rash appearing, teachers are stepping back from taking any action that involves physical contact and could result in a law suit.

I have a family member with a disabled teenager. His mother has no health and safety training yet she continues to lift this eighteen year old boy backwards and forwards to the bathroom. This is because the council housed her in a place that had a step down into a tiny bathroom with no wheel chair access.

The council refused to put in hoists because they needed to move house and didn’t want the expense. They asked for help from social services with help to bathe him and although there are social workers who have had health and safety training to lift weights, he was over a certain weight to be lifted without a hoist. And they won’t fit a hoist because….

So, with diabetes and two major heart attacks under her belt, his mum continues to lift him without health and safety training and does what the majority of us do – she just gets on with it.
Care workers all need health and safety training. To lift another human, however frail, can cause difficulties and especially back problems. Of course, people have done this for years without complaining but, as I said, in this age of compensation claims no company can afford to slip up in the training to approach things with common sense, apparently.

There are work places where health and safety training makes common sense. The building site, for instance. Nobody would expect an inexperienced person to go into such an environment without some form of training and expectations of good practice. The same applies to handling dangerous chemicals. It is common sense to make sure those that do that type of job are highly qualified people with the knowledge that will keep them safe.

But do we really, really need health and safety on how to use a desk and chair properly? Do we need a whole training course dedicated to the correct use of a ladder? Apparently so! This is because no one wants to take personal responsibility for their actions anymore and any chance of making a quick buck that will also see them taking six months paid holiday from work and this is what leads companies to cover their backs with health and safety training.

Employment expert Catherine Harvey looks at the way health and safety training has become such a neccessity in the workplace.