Professional Ethics and Corporate Governance in Contemporary Organizations

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Essay
Business ethics is an is a kind of pragmatic ethics which examines moral principles or
ethical issues that takes place within business environment. It is applicable in every aspect of
business conduct where the range of ethical issues reflects the amount to which business is
professed to be in odds with social and non-economic values (Amakobe, 2016). Issues in
business ethics and conflicts along with successes revolves around relationship building
where effective relationship edifice has become primary concern for most of the
contemporary organisations (Ferrell, Fraedrich, & Ferrell, 2014). This essay proposes to find
different aspects related to professional ethics and corporate governance to compare and
contrast the opinions regarding aforementioned topic and its relevancy to contemporary
organisations.
Spiritual leadership intrinsically motivates and inspire employees through faith and
vision of service provided to key stakeholders along with setting a corporate culture
according to the values of altruistic love for producing highly motivated, productive and
committed workforce. The spiritual commitments tap to the core needs of both employees as
well as leader’s well-being to create a value congruence and vision across the empowered
teams and organisational level. These further fosters higher performance level, organisational
commitment, social responsibility and financial outcomes- triple bottom line (Jr, Gabreil, &
Vanquez, 2018). However, Ferrell, et al. (2014) puts in front more practical approach to
ethics in business. Moral, according to the authors are personal philosophy regarding what is
wrong and what is right. The authors pinpoints that although moral views can be used while
taking business ethical decisions, principles act as a pervasive boundary under which
behaviour must not be violated thereby defining ethics as a behaviour within groups value.

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The significance of spiritual commitments is acquiring a considerable position in
contemporary workplaces and as an emerging concept in business management. Present
literature believes that “spiritual” do not always means “religious”. Agbim, Ayatse &
Oriarewo (2013) accepts that unethical business practices within business circle is gaining
much attention in government and academia. Most of the ethical codes of conduct, code of
practice and punitive measures are being applied to control the menace. Nevertheless, the
authors argue that despite the fact that spiritual commitments influence people choices and
assumptions with others in a positive way, spirituality while making ethical decisions is not
been explored by present business sufficiently. Therefore, the current practices indicate that
spiritual values, ethical behaviour, and virtues are inter-related to some extent. On contrary,
today’s firms believe in formal systems of control and accountability of ethical as well as
responsible behaviour, also known as corporate governance (Pless & Maak, 2011). Adda,
Azigwe & Awuni (2016) further ascertains that while business ethics includes moral
obligations and behavioural guidance, corporate governance proves to be an integrative
management concept that establishes responsible behaviour among organisations leaders.
Under the theory of corporate governance, board of directors or the leaders of
organisation provides over sightedness for taking critical decisions like ethical decision
related to relationship with stakeholders, risk management, internal control and executive
compensation. Thereby making ethical leadership associated with corporate governance.
Indeed, this statement can be proven by cases seen in present organisations which leads the
marketplace due to ethical stances seen in their ethical business decisions along with
corporate responsibility (Ferrell, Fraedrich, & Ferrell, 2014). Even Adda, et al. (2016)
supports the above viewpoint and adds further that ethical behaviour in business along with
corporate social responsibility can bring critical benefits to the businesses. The notion behind
businesses having social responsibility than making profits only for its stakeholders has been