Ethics & Governance

This article discusses the impact of expressing political thoughts as a business owner and the risks involved. It emphasizes the importance of careful communication and the potential consequences for the business. The article also explores the role of brands in communicating their position on social and political issues and the changing expectations of customers. It includes a case study on a Christmas ad campaign that was banned for being political.

Running Head: ETHICS & GOVERNANCE
Ethics & governance
Student’s Name
University Name
Author’s Note

2
ETHICS & GOVERNANCE
Over active media, the business as well as their owners and the executive can communicate
directly which consumers and as many times as they feel. However, this mode of direct
communication has to be utilised in a cautioned way, especially when wading into the areas
which is least relevant to their type of business. This particular implies the matter of politics is
involved.
Example can be provided in this context. In last two weeks several business entities has involved
internal religious freedom law in Indiana. Global Business leaders involved in the likes of Tim
Cook from Apple as well as Marc Benioff from Salesforce.com where expressive about the
preposition of India now as well as the small businesses, including the likes of memories pizza
were stuck into the fray (Crane and Matten 2007).
Owner of businesses need to be thoughtful regarding expressing political thoughts as well as
biased political experience.
Firstly it needs mention that the people do not separate individuals from their businesses.
It can be called guilty by association and the narrowness of the mind of people are to be blamed
from a but particularly for a small business owner, the owner is integrity associated with the
brand name in the perception of the people. That is why expression of and issue in the public
front can bring about damage to the business. In fact the employees are also considered to be
ambassadors for the business so far as public opinion is concerned and that is why the companies
must have proper media policy in implementation (Hartman and Desjardin 2008). Regarding the
social and political aspects, the owner of a company can have different Belief in compared to
that of the employees. This can act as a hindrance towards recruitment and selection of the best

3
ETHICS & GOVERNANCE
candidates who much believe the personal references regarding social and political issues of the
owner as a personal attack or vice versa.
The second most dreadful threat is that the business and might end up looking like a hypocrite.
Several business owners might seem to be hypocritical for stopping Business channel. For
evidence, trust helping organisations for their political based business strategy implementation.
However, unless organisations prevent selling products and services under the provision of the
Indian companies which did not seem required to go, the earth appears to be blatantly
hypercritical. the strong perception of the business letter in context to any social and political
issue might make sense, however, the business leader might forget a different application of
them that can make them seem and informed application of them which might make him look
uninformed, or at worse put pressure on the business for making a better stand compared to what
the leader was prepared to undertake (Jones and Ryan 1998).
The internet footprint is basically forever.
Considering the example of India now, it can be identify that the owners of memories pizza
expressed opinion in favour of the religious freedom bill and also provided the opinion that they
would hypothetically not cater any LGBT wading since it came into conflict with the personal
religious beliefs. people who had contradictory belief, in opposition to that statement took to the
social media with reckless abandoning comma posting reviews with one star on on various
websites as well as involving in several other negative as well as nasty comments all over
various social media websites. In fact the owners of the organisation received threats and violent
phone calls also. In this context, this situation is likely to occur with any small business if they
publicly put forward their opinion regarding active social and political issues. Analysing the
above discussed situation it can be commented that the violent threats can be ignored and

4
ETHICS & GOVERNANCE
perhaps the online reviews can also be removed. However, exposure of negative publicity in
such a large scale against animals in company can affect the small in establishment in the
upcoming years which will not allowed the business to consolidate.
The business might turn of customers.
Taking a public stand in context to divisive social and political issues, the business owners might
have to pay the cost by using customers. The owners can have biased perceptions and they can
also feel that it is good enough and justified for them to believe in such a way, however they are
taking real risks by doing so. That being said, the business might develop a strong niche
following or if the luck favours they can also get hold of a new community of supporters who
can later turned out to be potential customer groups also. However, analysing the outcome in
such situations Scherer and Palazzo (2011), says that this kind of situations generally incur bad
outcomes for the organisation. So far as the case study provided in the task description is
concerned, the company had to endure bad outcomes along with crowd funded campaign for
supporting the business which netted them about $850000 from a group of supporters.
Another important risk is that the message of the owner can also be misinterpreted. Given the
average interpretation skills of the consummation, is not likely that the statement of the owner
can be misinterpreted, misunderstood as well as framed in a different way which was not
intended by the speaker. Hence proceeding with question regarding providing opinion on social
or political matters should be done with caution (Sweeney 2018). As a distinguished person, I
support this concept of free speech and people should have the liberty to say what they want to
say about social occurrences. On any order today the people might blatantly disagree with the
speaker or agree with him also. That is why there is a strong chance that the speech provided by
the Client on behalf of the organisation or by any of the internal stakeholders of the organisation

5
ETHICS & GOVERNANCE
itself should be filtered in a proper way. However the masses are not always on board with
particular philosophy. Some of them might be having strong perception about politics and others
might not be having well-defined idea about the issue regarding which the comment has been
made by the business owner or from other internal group of stakeholders. Hence, under such
circumstances the chances of misinterpretation are highest. Most of the people, who are not
having any individual opinion in context to the issues, as analysed by Trevino and Nelson
(2011), are most likely to frame and opinion different with that of the popular figure. Again
when an individual is having strong perception about politics, then the risk as well as reverse of
expression of personal feelings about social and political issue should be weighed at fast. This is
why it is necessary that the expressions are provided in a new terminal and almost instances the
public domain like social medias or other form of media be avoided in order to express capital
personal opinion regarding the issue.
The modern day customers are cautious about the products of the brand, as much as they are
careful about the value that is generated by the brand towards the customers. In this context, keep
an eye on what the brand does as well as communicates other than production and sales. Any of
the mainstream market brands progressively communicates their position regarding social,
political as well as community issues by means of advertising influence as well as messaging.
According to a global survey, more than three fourth of the passengers feel that it is important for
the brands to communicate what they feel about specific social or political issues occurring in the
society. In this context Kelly (2018), provides a popular opinion which informs us that most of
the consumers feel that the perception of the brand regarding the social issue is similar to the
opinion reserved by them. However, this perception is more among the customers who are aged
above 30. In sharp contrast, more than half of the respondents in the survey reported that the

6
ETHICS & GOVERNANCE
brands should take assistance in context to the issue if they are feeling relevant attached to that or
brand is it self associated with the political issue in some way.
People feel that the brands should reach out to the mass public regarding the issues because it is
their social obligation. However the companies should also understand that there are other
groups of people who might think that the companies are receiving money for providing buyers
mass opinion and their other groups of people also who show active interest to the products of
the brand if the perception shared by the brand over the media is in alignment to their feelings
about the social and political issue.
Whether the business executives like it or not, there are clear political identities attached
with the corporations. Majority of the Australian people have the perception that the corporations
should have a political face. However, they should not be promoting the political agendas of any
specific party. Rather they should remain as a superficial critic of the social impacts of the
political decisions, regardless of whether these are controversial or not. In the last 5 years, the
perception of the customers has changed. The value attached to the brands has changed (Butler
and Sweney 2018). The customers nowadays look up for the active social movements that the
companies are taking up, along with their customary product offerings. However, there are some
political advertising rules in country which had been breached in the Christmas ad campaign of
Iceland.
As a part of the festive campaign, the supermarket chain made a deal with Greenpeace for
re-badging one animation short film that featured an orang-utan as well as the destruction of the
rainforest habitat in the hands of the palm oil industrialists. Because of the loss habitat of the
Malaysia, who is one of the major producers of palm oil in the world, is mainly accountable for
the fact that the orang-utan has now been notified as one of the critically endangered species.

7
ETHICS & GOVERNANCE
As stated out by the entity responsible for vetting the ads before they are broadcasted, known as
ClearCast, this advertisement came under the threat of breach of rules. In the Communications
Act of 2003, it was stated out that political advertising had been banned.
The moral legitimacy of the ad comes in to question when we observe one of the stipulations that
have been enshrined in the broadcasting code for the advertising practice. Is that an
advertisement would be prohibited in case if it is directed towards the political end. So far as the
question of relevance of the political issue and its context to the society is concerned, the
compliance of the company with the issue is mainly from sharp political interest. That is why;
the founder of Iceland, Malcolm Walker had only been talking of the film and its production cost
and market scope. He was concerned that even after using the voice of Emma Thompson, and
gaining the permission to use the logo of Greenpeace, they were only permitted a 10 second
window of the whole advertisement (McCarthy 2018). The organisation has no genuine interest
to speak of the impact of the social issue on their customers. Rather, the chief concern of the
organisation was the brand awareness that could have been developed.
However, as discussed many of the customers favour the fact that their favoured brands
are acknowledging the social issues. That is why, when the ad as posted on the Twitter handle,
there were about 3000 responses in favour of the advertisement. In fact more than 70% of the
Twitter responses recorded that they were not able to find any political interest. Analysing this
situation, it can be concluded that the moral legitimacy of the broadcasting of the advertisement
depends on the perspective from which it is judged. However, the perception of the ClearCast is
more valid in this context (Conversation.com 2019). This is because of the fact that moral
legitimacy principles imply that the content that is to be judged, is based on the fact is that there
is a negative or adversary impression developed among the public that is politically mended.

8
ETHICS & GOVERNANCE
Reference List
Butler, S and Sweney, M. 2018. celand's Christmas TV advert rejected for being political.
Theguardian.com Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/nov/09/iceland-
christmas-tv-ad-banned-political-greenpeace-orangutan Accessed on 1st May 2019]
Conversation.com, 2019. Iceland Christmas ad: barred, but it will help 2018 go down as the year
of ‘corporate caring’. Available at: https://theconversation.com/iceland-christmas-ad-barred-but-
it-will-help-2018-go-down-as-the-year-of-corporate-caring-106735 [Accessed on 1st may 2019]
Crane, A., & Matten, D. (2007), Making Decisions in Business Ethics Descriptive Ethical
Theories (Chapter 4) in 'Making decisions in business ethics' in Business ethics : managing
corporate citizenship and sustainability in the age of globalization, 2nd ed., Oxford University
Press, Oxford ; New York, pp. 127-167.
Hartman, LP & Desjardins, J 2008, Business ethics: Decision making for personal integrity &
social responsibility, McGraw-Hill irwin, Boston, pp 63-109. see Chapter 3: Philosophical ethics
and business https://equella.rmit.edu.au/rmit/file/0815e3d6-0fcf-3116-63ae-98e378546eae/1/
*******7731461.pdf
Jones, TM & Ryan, LV 1998, 'The effect of organizational forces on individual morality:
Judgment, moral approbation, and behavior', Business Ethics Quarterly, v. 8, n. 3, pp. 431-45.
Kelly, H. Iceland Christmas advert BANNED: Here’s why supermarket’s advert WON’T be
broadcast. Available at: https://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/1043334/Iceland-

9
ETHICS & GOVERNANCE
Christmas-advert-banned-reason-statement-Greenpeace-Emma-Thompson-video-watch
[Accesed on 1st May 2019]
McCarthy, J. 2018. Clearcast clarifies Iceland palm oil Christmas TV ad ban ‘misunderstanding’.
Available at: https://www.thedrum.com/news/2018/11/12/clearcast-clarifies-iceland-palm-oil-
christmas-tv-ad-ban-misunderstanding [Accessed on 1st May 2019]
Scherer, A. G., & Palazzo, G. (2011). The new political role of business in a globalized world: A
review of a new perspective on CSR and its implications for the firm, governance, and
democracy. Journal of Management Studies, 48(4), 899-931.
Sweeney, M (2018) Body that rejected Iceland Christmas ad 'faced storm of abuse', The
Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/nov/19/banned-iceland-christmas-ad-
clearcast-facvebook-palm-oil [Accessed 3 January 2019]
Trevino, LK and Nelson, KA (2011) Managing business ethics : straight talk about how to do it
right, Ch. 3 Deciding what's right: a psychological approach. (p. 71-110). 5th ed. Hoboken, NJ :
John Wiley.