live soft skills

WHAT IS ETHICAL? Ethics has different meanings to different people. To some, there is a fixed set of rights and wrongs that can never change. An action is either ethical or unethical, whatever the circumstances. Others believe that there is a fixed set of rights and wrongs at any given time – but that over time this can change. Behaviour that was "right" 500 years ago may now be considered unethical. Similarly, some believe that different ethical rules will need to exist in different countries and cultures, because people are different around the world and there cannot be one set of rights and wrongs that apply to everyone. Others believe that right and wrong depends entirely on the circumstances, and that there are no rules as such. In the exam , you may be required to use any of the theories in this chapter to comment on someone’s behaviour. Whether you believe their behaviour to be right or wrong will be affected by your own beliefs, so be careful! The key is to consi

STAKEHOLDER ACCOUNTABILITY If we believe that stakeholders are important, and if we believe that stakeholders may also have some responsibility for company behaviour, we need to ensure that companies are reporting adequate information to these stakeholders. Over recent years, company Annual Reports have grown massively in size, and part of this growth has been in non-financial reporting . Triple Bottom Line But this raises additional issues: reporting refers to the growth in Social and Environmental disclosures alongside financial disclosures. o Are there any "rules" on what should be reported? o Will there therefore be any comparability year on year, or within industries? o Will information reported be balanced ... or will it inevitably be more positive than negative? o There have been developments in these areas in recent years. Environmental accounting and audit frameworks (such as EMAS and ISO14000) have been developed to provide some guidance. Auditing information is

Why deal with stakeholders at all? As we saw earlier in the Chapter, the traditional view is that companies should be run for their owners, the shareholders, and that is all. However, we also saw that an alternative argument is that it might be good for business ("expedient") to keep staff happy, customers and suppliers happy, the local community happy etc. Instrumental Many believe that companies should demonstrate some CSR purely for profit reasons – that CSR looks good to the outside World and leads to higher sales. There is no moral element to this decision – the decision is taken purely for profit. Studies have shown that most consumers in the UK believe that companies are only fighting pollution, being nice to suppliers, and looking after employees because they think it makes them look like good companies and attract customers and profits.