Business Ethics Essay: Corporate Governance and Sustainability at BHP

This essay provides a comprehensive overview of business ethics, emphasizing its importance in the contemporary competitive business environment. It defines business ethics as a set of principles, values, and morals that govern a company's decisions and actions, including corporate governance and social responsibility. The essay uses BHP, a major Australian mineral company, as a case study to illustrate how ethical considerations are integrated into business strategies, particularly in relation to global sustainability and carbon emission reduction. It highlights the significance of ethical leadership, codes of ethics, and transparent communication in fostering a strong organizational culture. The essay also discusses the benefits of corporate governance, such as increased access to financing and overall business growth. The conclusion underscores the role of business ethics as a driving force behind successful companies, advocating for the emulation of BHP's ethical practices.

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Business Ethics
Name:
Course
Professor’s name
University name
City, State
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Introduction
Business ethics can be denoted as unwritten or written codes of set principles, values and morals.
Ethics governs the decisions and actions taken by a company. In a contemporary competitive
business world, set standards are used to determine bad and good behavior in decision making.
Corporate governance and corporate social responsibilities in business also falls under ethics in
business.
Growing constantly and generating evolution in business is the main concern of most companies.
By virtue of this, business competitiveness is generated more difficult and it is necessary to have
differential factors that guide leaders to meet strategic objectives.
Company in Focus
BHP is one of the biggest companies in Australia that deals with mineral. It is aware that
integrating CSR into its business will endear itself to the business. It focuses on addressing its
approach to global sustainability and reducing the carbon emissions from its industries. In its
annual report, it states that ethics and sustainability are core to business strategies and must be
integrated to decision making.
The importance of Business Ethics
While it is true, issues of ethics generate great difficulty to be understood and even more to be
put into practice by employees. It is important that all leaders question and ask the following
questions:
 Is business ethics an important issue for a company?

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 What effects does having a corporate governance system have?
 How do I measure the efficiency of compliance programs?
The answer to these questions will help guide the decisions of the members of corporate
governance and strengthen its entire organizational structure. In this way, business ethics
becomes the most important factor, as a control to prevent fraud within the organization. If
employees are ethical, it is less possible that they have criminal initiatives (Boylan, 2014).
Now, the act of not establishing strong ethical facts within the organization generates a harmful
product that is corruption, which is defined as the "use of power to divert the management of the
public towards the private benefit (Mallin, 2013). BHP In this sense has a good organizational
culture which is a main determining component of business ethics, directing people to positive
changes and challenging them to contribute to the construction of a healthy culture (Jeurissen
and Rijst, 2007).
Strategies that Help in Implementation of Business Ethics
Implementing a code of ethics: more than a document, a code of ethics are the guidelines that
define how senior managers and employees should act whole. This code must be easily
understood and disclosed to all personnel and most importantly all employees must comply with
it. A violation of the contained policies will have disciplinary actions (Monks and Minow, 2011).
Communication: the main strategy when you have a code of ethics is that it does not remain on
paper. The important thing is that it is known throughout the organization and that there is
feedback in order to give more impetus to the implementation and that it is easily understood by
the counterparts. Employees, on their part, have the duty to report, through an ethical line, the

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breaches of internal policies, norms and values; Likewise, third parties can present their concerns
regarding acts that violate the company's ethics. (Rossouw and Van Vuuren, 2017).
BHP Billiton should establish clear, transparent and independent governance structures to ensure
that none of the interested parties can interfere with the fair management of the processes, it also
plays an important role in relationships such as the formation of social dialogues and the
responsibility that maintains or seeks a relationship(Murthy, 2010).
Implementation
In the implementation of corporate ethics and its benefits, it is necessary to give space to
corporate governance issues, its role in strengthening internal policies and the importance they
have as a first line of defense in the identification and management of risks.
Benefits of Corporate Governance and Ethics
The next aspect to deal with are the benefits that corporate governance generally brings, but I
want to emphasize mainly in one; which in particular seems to me the most important and that is,
from the role of management, a strategic aspect to deal with. Therefore, access to financing is
considered as a benefit that allows growth and welfare in companies. For BHP, "a successful
corporate governance can increase companies' access to external financing, which in turn can
generate more important investments, more growth and more jobs. Another important aspect that
is included (Halinen and Jokela,2016.).
Conclusion

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Business ethics is the engine and force behind successful companies. BHP has set a good
precedent in business ethics in Australia and can be emulated by others in corporate governance
structuring. Communication is fundamental in any project and this depends on the new measures
taken the management being known by all employees.

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References
Boylan, M. (2014). Business ethics. Chichester, U.K.: Wiley Blackwell.
Jeurissen, R. and Rijst, M. (2007). Ethics & business. Assen: Koninklijke Van Gorcum.
Mallin, C. (2010). Corporate governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mallin, C. (2013). Corporate governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Monks, R. and Minow, N. (2011). Corporate governance. Chichester, West Sussex, U.K.: John
Wiley & Sons.
Murthy, C. (2010). Business ethics. Mumbai [India]: Himalaya Pub. House.
Rossouw, D. and Van Vuuren, L. (2017). Business ethics. Cape Town: Oxford University Press.
Shaw, W. (2017). Business ethics. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
Velasquez, M. (2018). Business ethics. New York: Pearson.