Business Ethics and Its Implications

Introduction: The business ethics are very important for any organization. Business ethics are moral principles which guide company to behave in an organized way. Before learning business ethics one should know what business ethics is. Business ethics is the study of appropriate business rules and regulations regarding potentially debatable issues, such as corporate governance, insider trading, bribery, discrimination, corporate social responsibility and fiduciary responsibilities (De George, 1982). Business ethics are often guided by law and to gain public acceptance it provide a basic framework. Legal and ethical are two different terms but work with together for guiding business operation structure. From this report readers will be able to understand the organisational ethical issues needed to business operation. Readers will also learn about the implications of business ethics in business operations. In this study we will refer to all of ethical theories which are applied on UK largest retailer shop Marks & Spencer.

The Meaning and Importance of Ethics in The Business World

Ethics is very crucial for our normal life as well as for our professional life. Ethics is the moral philosophy which is very important for any kind of business. In business ethics include arranging, protecting and mentioning concepts of right and wrong manner in business operations (De George, 1982). As Marks & Spencer is the largest UK retailer shop, they follow the UK parliament’s roles and provisions as well as maintain their own ethical and legal policies. Marks and Spencer started its journey in 1884 with the aim of providing high quality product and services. Now it has 914 stores and e-commerce market all over the UK.

Marks and Spencer maintain legal and ethical factors to do business in a right way. They follow all political, social and legal factors. They try to attract consumer through their potential works. They sustain in the market for a long time only for their ethical work (Duska, 2000). They always wan to do a valid business. They use all eco-friendly things to wrap their product. Not only wrapping t=but also they maintain their wastage in a systematic drainage system. They do their business as well as they keep an eye on the public safety. Public and environment safety is the biggest concern beside their business.

The ethical issues are core values of an organization. These issues vary from organization to organization. Different industry has different ethics. For retailer shops there are some common ethics. Ethics can be two types’ explicit ethics which are written and formatted ethics and the other is implicit ethics which are not written and documented. Business ethics can be applied for internally as well as externally. For retailer shops there are some common ethics like not miss use the company’s assets, not miss interrupted the promotional information, properly maintain the organization and customers’ relationship as well as the relationship of organization and governance etc. (Duska, 2000). Mark and Spencer is a popular retailer shop. So it follows the general ethics as well as it has some special ethics as company’s own. To attract customer as well as for the well-being of society they follow that ethics. Mark and Spencer provide best quality product to their customers. They have an expert team to check the product quality and ensure the management team about the product quality. They always keep focus on customers’ perceptions, customers’ needs and want (George, 1994). Besides these the do their business in a manner which is not harmful for the environment.

There is extensive series of ethical concern on business operations. Marks and Spencer focus in the professional ethics, employments rights issues; functional ethics, corporate social responsible etc. which is very important for this type of business. In these current days business environment ethics like equality; justice and morality which are the main issues that are pretention difficult problem to the business (George, 1994). Most ultimate ethical issues are built from people’s trust and integrity. Besides, make sure that the action for these ethics should be sound and safe for the environment or ecological system.

Like other organization Marks and Spencer company has few specific goals and objectives. The organization wants to operate from the legal and ethical way. The main goals and objectives of Marks and Spencer are presenting to the below:

1. The main aim is to focus on a strategy of “Plan A” by 2020
2. It’s a sustainable plan for health and economy
3. For reducing the social an environmental footprint of business, it was taken at 2007.
4. Organization’s main concern on big sale and take the market leader place
5. Maintaining product quality and reaching to the customers.
6. Gaining profit through meet the customers need with their product.

The Implications of Ethics in Business

In the business field every organization should maintain ethics as well as they should operate the business from the ethical concern. All organization should know the implication of ethical codes to promote the ethical behaviour. Both organization and the different stakeholder can be benefited from this ethical behaviour (Hoffman, 1991). Marks and Spencer has a great impact on different stakeholder. But sometimes there would be conflict between them.

In the business ethical concern of Marks and Spencer different stakeholders are related. The main relations are with the employees or stuffs, customers and supplies, society and the nation. Marks and Spencer maintains profitable customers’ relationship through their ethical activities. Most suggestions for business and stakeholders of ethics are described below.

Ethical issues guide people about the right and wrong and it always guides directly. A climate of integrity and excellence is created to help them by ethical code. Ethical requirements are clearly summaries the rights and responsibilities of employees and helps watch against variable and special treatment of employees (Hoffman, 1991).

In any company conflict is common. There can be conflict between customers and sales person, conflict between same level employees or conflict within different level employees. Conflict between customers and sales person is very common conflict. There would be so reason behind these conflicts such as pricing conflict, product chooses or interest difficulty or any misbehave of the sales person with the customers (Moon, 2001). For the company’s welfare sake, the conflict must be resolved from the ethical and legal view point and sales person should say sorry to the customers.

Customers, vendors and suppliers are major part of an organization. To be a popular organization these parties are fully involved. Marks and Spencer fully focus on product quality, product supply quantity, product availability and so on.

To promote constructive social change by awareness of the community’s needs and encouraging employees and other stakeholders, there is no alternative issue like ethical issues (Moon, 2001). It’s a duty of all the business organization to think about societal responsibilities. If organizations do these duties properly, it also be benefited for the nationals or government regulations

Marks and Spencer want to be the market leader in their selected product category. Business ethics help them to grab the position. For Marks and Spencer, it is very important how they operate in the market and what type of benefit they are able to provide their customers. This organization maintains government rules and regulations which are provisioned by UK governmental court (Trevino and Weaver, 1994). Where ethics are established, there employees are motivated to work properly. Not only employees want to do work but also they are influenced by the ethical terms to the organization. Where there is a practice of ethical business customer and the social people have put on their faith and reliability on that business.

The Social Implications of Business Ethics

Behind the every business there is a common aim which is to do something for the society. This aim can be fulfilled by the social implication of business ethics. Marks and Spencer have been worked for people from 1884 and they achieve people trust by their ethical business activities (Trevino and Weaver, 1994). There is an impact on society and social people of the implications of business ethics by Marks and Spencer. These ethics also affect the social fabric community as well as the well-being of individual and clusters of people. Here are presenting those ethical factors which effects for social correspondent.

Ethics in Finance

Finance is one of the important parts of business. Every business has to do transfer their finance regularly with external stakeholders. In finance, ethics means to focus on economic value as well as on values in relevant actions. Influential and managers in finance need to elegant a deep understanding of sensible and therefore official restrictions to align their business on ethical phases (Trevino and Weaver, 1994). In the time of dealing with finance, there are several scopes to do unethical behaviors by employees. But in Marks and Spencer, there is a department to maintain financial activities without doing any unethical work. They are very concern about the ethics. Doing unethical activities in finance is mostly like doing corruption. To prevent the unethical activities in finance sector they are very concern about their annual financial report where all the trading and transaction activities are recorded.

Ethics in HRM

In any organization human resource is very crucial part. To manage properly the human resource is a challenging job. Human Resource Management (HRM) department doing one of the toughest jobs in any organization. HRM department works for recruiting people, managing them, training them sometimes firing someone for various reasons. In the recruitment process sometimes employer are made unethical job for their personal benefit. So in Human Resource Management, ethics should be established and maintain to select and recruiting right people. If there is ethics code, job section would be on the merit basis rather than on the basis of race, nationality, gender or other unfair issues (Vogel, 1991).. In this case Marks and Spencer always keeps the HRM ethics to ensure the recruitment process as fair and free. They recruit new employees by formal recruitment circulation like advertisement to the society.

Ethics in Production

In any business operation, production is an essential part which should follow the ethics code. Marks and Spencer is very strict in that case. That’s why the can hold the huge market share from the very beginning of their journey to till now. In production matter Marks and Spencer maintain the Animal act 1989 as well as other production related legal act. They always concern about the society welfare and people’s interest. They target people through advertisement and other promotion related activities (Vogel, 1991). They are very concern about their product quality as well as maintain all ethical codes to replace the product in a specific period at a specific time.

Ethical Issues a Business Needs to Consider in its Operational Activities

There are some ethical issues which should be considered in the operational activities by the organization. Organization must concern to the social and environmental factors that are not disordered by their production activities. Ethical issues are maintained not to do any pollution and give a safe environment (Vogel, 1991). In past, local people sometimes have complained for different organization because of their sound pollution or smell pollution and so no. In this regard Marks and Spencer do not get any complain.

Marks and Spencer have been operating so many years and it always follows the ethical concerns generated by UK parliament. To maintain the ethical codes is not so easy. There are two different ethical factors that hold to ethical questions facing at different groups.

To establish any type of business organization, employer should concern about the environment. They should be concern not to break the social and natural ecological systems.

Local communities and human rights

Before doing any business, organization should know about human rights codes. Marks and Spencer produce different types of product. In production process they are much concern about local communities’ safety. Besides, they have a long history of respecting human rights in the UK and they have always stood up for those morals internationally (Marksandspencer.com, 2017). For transportation purpose they use Lorries and vans which are not harmful for the communities. They strictly follow all the rules and regulations provided by UK government in the whole process of their business operation.

I would like to mention that all their transportation activities are held in once or twice in a week and the drivers of Lorries and vans drive slowly not to do any sound.

National communities and save forest

Marks and Spencer always tries to do something good for the national communities and to save forest. They always make sure that the wastage of their factory not to harm the environment. They control all unethical such as unstructured sanitation, lack of wastage maintenance etc. (Marksandspencer.com, 2017). Unethical activities destroy the ecological balance of the communities. Those are also harmful for forest.

To save forest and national communities’ government should take proper steps and build more rules and regulations and strictly imposed them to the organizations.

Conclusions

This report carries all about the business ethics within the business operation. So now tell about the business ethics is only waste time. To get a sound environment, safe community, fair working place every organization should follow the ethics of business (Vogel, 1991). The concept and examination of ethical issues in Marks and Spencer business will help the readers for other business analysis and understand the ethics of other business very easily.

References

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7. Trevino, L. and Weaver, G. (1994). Business Ethics/Business Ethics: One Field or Two?.Business Ethics Quarterly, 4(2), p.113.
8. Vogel, D. (1991). The Ethical Roots of Business Ethics.Business Ethics Quarterly, 1(1), p.101.