Comparative Business Ethics & Social Responsibility

This document discusses the concepts of business ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR) and their relationship. It explains the importance of following ethical principles in business and the benefits of CSR activities in sustaining organizations. The document also explores different ethical theories and the role of stakeholders in CSR.

Comparative business ethic & social
responsibility
1

Table of Contents
Business Ethics................................................................................................................................3
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)...........................................................................................4
Relation between the two concepts..................................................................................................5
Reference List..................................................................................................................................6
2

Business Ethics
In order to sustain in the market place organization must follow certain rules and regulations
because lack of implementation of rules and regulations are very necessary because after the era
of globalization organizations are exposed to severe threat and to sustain such threats it is
essential for the organization to gain competitive advantage (Bell, Dyck and Neubert, 2017).
Business ethics are defined as the principles that serve as the guidelines by following which
business conducts itself (Tipu, 2015). The main reason behind considering such type of ethics is
to assure that rights thing are followed and wrong things are back lashed. While conducting
business activities specially to sustain in the market organization sometimes involves harmful
ways to conducting business activities because these ways serve as shortcut to the success and
thus to reach at success these harmful ways are heavily adopted by the organizations. However,
these harmful activities buy the organization has resulted in several issue among which
environmental issue are the most significant ones. Employee issue also evolves due to adoption
of harmful methods. Hence to conduct business activities in a ethical manner, business ethics
came into light.
To conduct ethically organization laid down certain rules and regulations and by following these
rules and regulations the company carries out its operational activities. Organizations like Apple
Inc; Tesco all has adopted certain code of ethics. Specially at the workplace of a company, the
ethical behaviors is desirable because here all individuals work with a view of serving best to the
company but any kind of unethical act here demotivate the individuals and this lead to the
unproductiveness of the employees.
In order to understand ethic in a better way theories of ethics can be considered, however there
are two main different forms of ethical theories and they are the consequential and non
consequential theories.
Consequential theories are the normative theories which states that one’s conduct is the ultimate
result for judging the conduct whether it is wrong or right. Thus it can be said that this theory
mainly advocates right cat produces right outcome. The example of consequential theory is
Utilitarianism. However the non consequential theories states that right or wrong is a intrinsic
3

action is not related to outcome. The example of non consequential theory is Deontology ethical
theories (Snellman, 2015).
Sub ethical theories are Rights, here the ethical theories show that rights can be established by
the society and is protected also by the society (Monga, 2017). Rights of all individuals should
be restores properly because lack of rights leads to disastrous situation which can be harmful to
the mankind. In an economy the rights are decided by the society and for the people of the
society to foster equity between all groups of people. Virtue is another ethical theory that sates
that a individual will be judged by the character not by the action because action always deviate
from the normal behavior. This theory have pressurized upon the virtual character.
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
Corporate social responsibility is an approach that adds to the sustainable development process
by delivering to social, economic and environmental benefits to all the stakeholders. After the
rapid innovation of technologies the harmful effects have also increased drastically and for this
reason our environment has to suffer a lot (Unit, 2015). To reduce the suffering of environment
CSR activities act as the remedy because it has all the potentials to add positivity to the
environment.
Stakeholder’s theory mainly gives idea about how the business should function. According to the
theory creating value for the customers, suppliers, distributors, employees and many more is the
key to the success (Saeidi et al., 2015). Thus it advocates that all stakeholders must achieve
positivity by the functioning of the business. In an organization there exist two types of
stakeholders internal and the external ones and CSR activities affects both types of stakeholders
by creating value. Thus CSR activities are the right solution to the key of growth of an
organization. Thus it is visible that by conducting CSR activities companies are likely to reap
maximum advantages because these activities create value for all the stakeholders of the
company and this value creation in turn creates a ground of increase in growth in the purview of
the company (Jones, Wicks and Freeman, 2017). The benefits that organization receives by
undertaking CSR activities are explained below:
4

An organization generally conducts CSR activities to attract the new employees and retain the
old ones because CSR activities increase the morale of the employees. CSR activities also enrich
the outlook of the company by developing a positive image and this positive image helps the
company to gain competitive advantage in the market place. Cost saving is another way that
attracts the organizations to carry out CSR activities because in CSR activities the circular
economy features like reuses, recycle concepts are used and this methods reduces the cost of
production (Lins, Servae and Tamayo, 2017). Finally increasing brand value is the highest
achievement of conducting CSR activities because this high brand value in turn increases the
revenue of the company.
According to the study of Lins, Servae and Tamayo (2017), it has been observed that CSR
activities are mainly undertaken by the large organizations because this kind of activities requires
large amount of investment. Organizations like Tesco, Xerox, H&M and many more carry out
CSR activities and all these organization are multinational ones. Thus it can be said that in order
to sustain in the market and move towards the path of sustainability organizations undertake
these kinds of activities because they incur benefits in their operational units.
Relation between the two concepts
From the above discussion of business ethics and CSR it can be seen behaving ethically in the
business environment is followed by organizations to sustain. Conducting Corporate Social
responsibilities also falls under category of sustaining in the market place. Thus it can be said
both the activities are necessary and interrelated to each other because business ethics and CSR
help the organizations to sustain in the long run and serve all the stakeholders in a better way.
5

Reference List
Bell, G.G., Dyck, B. and Neubert, M.J., 2017. Ethical Leadership, Virtue Theory, And Generic
Strategies. Radical Thoughts on Ethical Leadership, 113.
Jones, T.M., Wicks, A.C. and Freeman, R.E., 2017. Stakeholder theory: The state of the art. The
Blackwell guide to business ethics, pp.17-37.
Lins, K.V., Servaes, H. and Tamayo, A., 2017. Social capital, trust, and firm performance: The
value of corporate social responsibility during the financial crisis. The Journal of Finance, 72(4),
pp.1785-1824.
Monga, M., 2017. “Doing the Right Thing” in the Banking Sector: Integrity from an Upper
Echelons Perspective. In Integrity in Business and Management (pp. 105-135). Routledge.
Saeidi, S.P., Sofian, S., Saeidi, P., Saeidi, S.P. and Saaeidi, S.A., 2015. How does corporate
social responsibility contribute to firm financial performance? The mediating role of competitive
advantage, reputation, and customer satisfaction. Journal of business research, 68(2), pp.341-
350.
Snellman, C.L., 2015. Ethics ManagEMEnt: how to achiEvE Ethical organizations and
ManagEMEnt?. Business, Management and Education, 13(2), pp.336-357.
Tipu, S.A.A., 2015. The Cognitive Side of Entrepreneurial Ethics: What Do We Still Need to
Know?. Journal of Enterprising Culture, 23(01), pp.117-137.
Unit, B., 2015. Corporate social responsibility.
6