Businessetiquettearticles.com – A set of ethical values or a individual code of morals can serve as the direct for judging between right and off-base in your lifestyle. Commerce morals are comparable in rule to individual morals, but have much broader results. From the specialist on the deals floor to the trade official within the corner office, choices made on the work are regularly judged by a much bigger number of individuals than individual choices. Hence, the destiny of an representative, and maybe the organization’s destiny, could rise or drop concurring to the seen judgment of choices made within the workplace.1 In other words, company ethics can have a huge affect on a business’s victory.

For example, by engaging in unfair or questionable business practices purely for the sake of profit, an overly ambitious business executive with little regard for business ethics is courting disaster. Although the bottom line may improve in the short-term, the long-term fallout from organizational and possibly public disapproval may prove fatal to the executive’s reputation and the organization’s sustainable success. As American investor and business magnate Warren Buffet advises, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”² Read through this blog to explore what principles should guide company morals, learn from real-world ethical business practice examples and find out how strong leaders can combine basic business principles with business ethics to mold an organization into one that does good while generating good outcomes.

What is ethical behavior?

Ethical behavior can’t necessarily be defined by one set of actions or moral values. As defined by the Encyclopedia Britannica, ethics, is the discipline concerned with what is morally good and bad and morally right and wrong. “[Ethics is] not a matter of factual knowledge in the way that the sciences and other branches of inquiry are. Rather, it has to do with determining the nature of normative theories and applying these sets of principles to practical moral problems.”⁹

There are some ethics, or moral principles, that are generally agreed upon such as that it’s wrong to kill another person, returning a lost wallet is good, littering is bad, and so on. However, personally, and in business, you’re likely to come across situations in which the good or bad choice isn’t so obvious.

When it comes to business, ethical behavior can be determined by basic business principles, certain company morals and codes of conduct specific to certain industries. Basic business principles say that you should create a quality product and pay fair wages to your employees. The corresponding business ethics examples could be that you shouldn’t falsely advertise your product and you shouldn’t pay one race or gender more than another. Company morals might further dictate that the business doesn’t advertise with networks that hold certain political views or that the firm’s executive salaries are made public. Another type of ethical business practice example is a code of ethics, which are often specific to different professions. For example, financial advisors have something called “fiduciary duty” which is a legal requirement to act within the best interests of their clients.¹⁰

The path to sustainable success

Ambition, competitiveness and market-savvy are important characteristics for success, but must be guided by a strong inner core of ethical principles.¹ To achieve lasting, sustainable success, organizations need all of their personnel to make ethically sound decisions regarding job performance and personal behavior. This is especially difficult when the stakes are high and no one else is watching.³

To help establish company expectations, an executive with an inherent appreciation for ethical values can help promote a benevolent environment in which ethical behavior is encouraged and nurtured. In fact, business leaders committed to personal and organizational excellence are often called upon to define a company-specific set of ethical business practices to help employees understand the principles by which they will be judged. Once developed and implemented, this set of principles offers a path to lasting, sustainable success.⁴,⁵

Below, the 12 ethical principles in business are presented to help provide strong guidance for ethical business practices.⁴ Included with these principles are details that focus on the ways in which each principle can be demonstrated by both businesses as a whole and by individual employees.