Top 10 Principles for Positive Business Ethics

This morning, I read about a company using on-line auctions to defraud customers. Last week, I consulted on an ethics complaint where a business coach betrayed a client's confidentiality. And, recently a Physician was convicted of insider trading based on information from a patient, a violation of both business ethics and her professional ethics.

1. Business Ethics are built on Personal Ethics. There is no real separation between doing what is right in business, and playing fair, telling the truth and being ethical in your personal life.p>

2. Business Ethics are based on Fairness. Would a dis-interested observer agree that both sides are being treated fairly? Are both sides negotiating in good faith? Does each transaction take place on a "level playing field"? If so, the basic principles of ethics are being met.p>

3. Business Ethics require Integrity. Integrity refers to whole-ness, reliability and consistency. Ethical businesses treat people with respect, honesty and integrity. They back up their promises, and they keep their commitments.p>

4. Business Ethics require Truth-telling. The days when a business could sell a defective product and hide behind the "buyer beware" defense are long gone. You can sell products or services that have limitations, defects or are out-dated, but not as first-class, new merchandise. Truth in advertising is not only the law, business ethics require it.p>

5. Business Ethics require Dependability. If your company is new, unstable, about to be sold, or going out of business, ethics requires that you let clients and customers know this. Ethical businesses can be relied upon to be available to solve problems, answer questions and provide support.p>

6. Business Ethics require a Business Plan. A company's ethics are built on its image of itself and its vision of the future and its role in the community. Business ethics do not happen in a vacuum. The clearer the company's plan for growth, stability, profits and service, the stronger its commitment to ethical business practices.p>

7. Business Ethics apply Internally and Externally. Ethical businesses treat both customers and employees with respect and fairness. Ethics is about respect in the conference room, negotiating in good faith, keeping promises and meeting obligations to staff, employers, vendors and customers. The scope is universal.p>

8. Business Ethics require a Profit. Ethical businesses are well-run, well-managed, have effective internal controls, and clear expectations of growth. Ethics is about how we live in the present to prepare for the future, and a business without profits (or a plan to create them) is not meeting its ethical obligations to prepare for the future well-being of the company, its employees and customers.p>

9. Business Ethics are values-based. The law, and professional organizations, must produce written standards that are inflexible and universal. While they may talk about "ethics", these documents are usually prescriptive and refer to minimal standards. Ethics are about values, ideals and aspirations. Ethical businesses may not always live up to their ideals, but they are clear about their intent.>

10. Business Ethics come from the Boss. Leadership sets the tone, in every area of a business. Ethics are either central to the way a company functions, or they are not. The executives and managers either lead the way, or they communicate that cutting corners, deception and dis-respect are acceptable. Line staff will always rise, or sink, to the level of performance they see modeled above them. Business ethics starts at the top.

Business

Ethics is about the quality of our lives, the quality of our service, and ultimately, about the bottom line. An unhappy customer complains to an average of 16 people. Treating employees, customers, vendors and the public in an ethical, fair and open way is not only the right thing, in the long run, it's the only way to stay in business.

Top 10 Principles for Positive Business Ethics

Top 10 Principles for Positive Business Ethics

© Copyright 2003 by Philip E. Humbert. All Rights Reserved. This article may be copied and used in your own newsletter or on your website as long as you include the following information: "Written by Dr. Philip E. Humbert, writer, speaker and success coach. Dr. Humbert has over 300 free articles, tools and resources for your success, including a great newsletter! It's all on his website at: http://www.philiphumbert.com

Business Plan - Purpose and Objectives

A detailed description of a new or existing business, including the company's product or service, marketing plan, financial statements and projections and management principles, require a plan to be implemented. A document that spells out a company's expected course of action for a specified period usually includes a detailed listing and analysis of risks and uncertainties. For the small business, it should examine the proposed products, the market, the industry, the management policies, the marketing policies, production needs and financial needs. Frequently, it is used as a prospectus for potential investors and lenders.

Think of it as a production line. What's go in the start are raw materials and unfinished assemblies. Here, the raw materials include:

Business

-Talent and initiative from employees

Business Plan - Purpose and Objectives

-Capital -Market position

-The company's creditworthiness

-The firm's earning capacity

-Assessment of changes in the marketplace.

It should have four major aspects:

- Its contribution to purpose and objectives

- Its primacy among the manager's tasks

- Its pervasiveness

- The efficiency of resulting plans.

The Contribution of Planning to Purpose and Objectives: Every plan and all its supporting plans should contribute to the accomplishment of the purpose and objectives of the enterprise.

The Primacy of Planning Manager must plan in such a way that it leads to proper organizing, staffing, leading and controlling which support the accomplishment of enterprise objectives. Planning and controlling are inseparable. Any attempt to control without a plan is meaningless, since there is no way for people to tell whether they are going where they want to go. Plans thus furnish the standards of control.

The Pervasiveness of Planning: Planning is a function of all managers, which vary with each manager's authority and with the nature of the policies and plans assigned by superiors. If managers are not allowed to a certain degree of discretion and planning responsibility, they are not truly managers.

The Efficiency of Plans: The effectiveness of plan refers to its contribution to the purpose and objectives. Plan is efficient if it achieves its purpose at a reasonable cost, when cost is measured not only in terms of time or money or production but also in the degree of individual and group satisfaction.

Procedures: Procedures are plans that establish a required method of handling future activities. They are chronological sequences of required actions. They are guides to action rather than to thinking and they detail the exact manner in which certain activities must be accomplished.

Rules: Rules are unlike procedures in that they guide action without specifying a time sequence. In fact, a procedure might be looked upon as a sequence of rules. Rule may be a part of procedure.

Programs: Programs are a complex of goals, policies, procedures, rules, task assignments, steps to be taken, resources to be employed and other elements necessary to carry out a given course of action; further supported by budgets.

Budgets: Budget is a statement of expected results expressed in numerical terms. Financial operating budget is often called a "profit plan". This budget can be expressed in financial terms, in terms of labor- hours, units of product or machine hours or in any other numerically measurable term.

Steps in Planning: Being aware of opportunities, a manager should take a preliminary look at possible future opportunities and see them clearly and completely know where they stand in light of their strengths and weaknesses, understand what problems they wish to solve, and why and know what they expect to gain. Planning requires a realistic diagnosis of the opportunity situation.

Establishing objectives: This is to be done for the long term as well as for the short term. Objectives specify the expected results and indicate the end points of what is to be done, where the primary emphasis is to be placed and what is to be accomplished by the network of strategies, policies, procedures, rules, budgets and programs. Objectives form a hierarchy.

Developing premises: There are assumptions about the environment in which the plan is to be carried out. It is important for all managers involved in planning to agree on the premises. Forecasting is important in premising: what kind of markets will there be? What volume of sales? What prices? What products? What technical developments? What costs? What wage rates? What tax rates and policies? What new plans? How will expansion be financed? What are the long-term trends? Because the future is so complex, it would not be profitable or realistic to make assumption about every detail of the future environment of a plan.

Determining alternative courses: The more common problem is not finding alternatives but reducing the number of alternatives so that the most promising may be analyzed. The planner must usually make a preliminary examination to discover the most fruitful possibilities.

Evaluating alternative courses: From the various alternatives available proper evaluation should be done which may involve ash flow.

Selecting a course: The best alternative should be selected.

Numbering plans by budgeting Final step is giving them meaning by converting them into budgets. The overall budgets of an enterprise represent the sum total of income and expenses, with resultant profit or surplus and the budgets of major balance sheet items such as cash and capital expenditures.

Business Plan - Purpose and Objectives

Michael Russell
Your Independent Business Plan guide.