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Friday 15 February 2013


Assignment 2:
Name:         Nor’Afifah Binti Mohd Latib
I/D:             62283212090
Class:          ME42


QUESTION: Briefly explain the definition of Business Ethics Management and its components.

ANSWER:
Business ethics management is the direct attempt to formally or informally manage ethical issues or problems through specific policies, practices and programmes. There are nine components of business ethics management.


First is a mission or values statement. These are general statements of corporate aims, beliefs and values. For example, the global pharmaceutical company GSK has a mission ‘to improve the quality of human life by enabling people to do more, feel better and live longer’.


Second is a code of ethics. There are explicit outlines of what type of conduct is desired and expected of employees from an ethical point of view within a certain organization, profession, or industry.

Third is a reporting/ advice channels. Gathering information on ethical matters is clearly an important input into effective management. Providing employees with appropriate channels for reporting or receiving advice regarding ethical dilemmas can also be a vital means of identifying potential problems, and resolving them before they escalate and/or become public. Some of organizations have therefore introduced ethics hotline or other forms of reporting channels specifically for employees to notify management of ethics abuses or problems and to seek help and guidance on solutions.

Fourth is a risk analysis and management. Awareness of reputational and financial risks has been one of the key drivers of increased attention to business ethics. Managing business ethics by identifying areas of risk, assessing the likelihood and scale of risks, and putting in place measures to mitigate or prevent such risks from harming the business has led to more sophisticated ways of managing business ethics, although as yet, most companies have not developed an integrated approach to risk and ethics.

Fifth are an ethics managers, officers, and committees. In some organizations, specific individuals or groups are appointed to co-ordinate and/or take responsibility for managing ethics in their organization. A growing number of large corporation also now have an ethics committee, or a CSR committee, which oversees many aspects of the management of business ethics. For example, the UK supermarket J. Sainsbury plc has a board-level Corporate Responsibility Committee with responsibility for recommending corporate responsibility policy, and agreeing and approving the annual corporate responsibility report.

Sixth is an ethics consultant. The initial growth in this sector was driven by environmental consultants who tended to offer specialist technical advice, but as the social and ethical agenda facing companies has developed the consultancy market has expended to offer a broader portfolio of services including research, project management, strategic advice, social and environmental auditing and reporting, verification, stakeholder dialogue, and others.

Seventh is an ethics education and training. These provisions might be offered either in-house or externally through ethics consultants, universities and college, or corporate training specialist. Many academic writers have stressed the need for more ethics education among business people, not only in terms of providing them with the tools to solve ethical dilemmas, but also to provide them with the ability to recognize and talk about ethical problems more accurate and easily.

Eighth are stakeholder consultation, dialogue, and partnership programmes. There are various means of engaging an organization’s stakeholders in ethics management, from surveying them to assess their views on specific issues to including them more fully in corporate decision-making. Just as importantly though, it is evident that if ‘good’ business ethics is about doing the ‘right’ thing, then it is essential that organization consult with relevant stakeholders in order to determine what other constituencies regard as ‘right’ in the first place.

Ninth is auditing, accounting, and reporting. Finally, we come to a set of closely related activities that are concerned with measuring, evaluating, and communicating the organization’s impacts and performance on a range of social, ethical, and environmental issues of interest to their stakeholders. These aspects have not pioneered in the US, but rather in Europe.

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