Ethical Business

Business is a process of exchange of goods and services, a process of value addition to raw resources. In today’s increasingly competitive world, business organizations have a big role to play- economic, social as well as cultural. The impact of business activities on society has increased manifold in the past few decades. Thus, it is imperative the businesses follow ethics- certain codes of conduct-which lead to a positive impact on the society and reduce to the minimum, the negative impacts. Business activities use natural resources which belong to the society as a whole, thus care should be taken that they are used judiciously. Also, waste management is important. Polluting industrial waste is a burden on the environment. Businesses also need to be ethical in their daily process. The recent Satyam Scandal is a good example to show how the acts of one person in the organization can affect many. Ramalingum Raju, founder of Satyam Computers, forged the accounts, of the company to fill in some gaps in performance, which, over the years, became so big that it became the largest corporate fraud in the Indian corporate history. It not only led to loss of jobs for many, but also put a scar on the face of Indian IT industry. There are issues like equal opportunities to all people. Employee harassment, discrimination on the basis of caste or gender etc. though still prevalent, are unacceptable. Since business organizations are the engines of growth in this dominantly capitalist world, they have to take up roles beyond immediate profit motives for their sustainable development.