10 Corporate Ethics principles in detail

Corporate or Business ethics means ethical or moral standards that drive corporate culture. Also referred to as corporate ethics, it encompasses ethical issues arising in a commercial or professional environment. In today’s world of the free and open market, globalisation and explosion in communication, ethics play a vital role.

Principles of Business Ethics;

There are 10 pillars of corporate ethics for executives starting from Accountability, honesty, integrity, keeping promises, loyalty, fairness, etc. Lets understand these in detail below.

Honesty: Businesses must show honesty in all their communications and conducts. Abraham Lincoln has drawn a comparison between character and reputation as a tree and a shadow. To build a reputation one must have a character and honesty at the forefront of it. Honesty has to be accompanied by forthrightness and candidness.

Integrity: You demonstrate integrity with your thoughts, words, and actions in line with each other. Ethical executives earn trust by having the integrity of character. Integrity often requires walking the extra mile with moral courage and inner strength to do the right thing even at the cost of personal loss.

Keeping Promises: An executive has to keep all the promises to fulfil all the spirit of their commitments and promises in order to earn respect and trust. They do not manipulate agreements or misinterpret them to avoid compliance with the commitment.

Loyalty: Executives must be loyal with their organisations as well as people or other organisations they work with. They must strive to work and protect the lawful interests of their organisations and colleagues. They need to safeguard information learned in confidence and not use it for personal gains.

Accountability: Any person should maintain accountability and must own the outcome of their decisions and the ethical quality of decisions they make.

Reputation and Morale: Reputation of a company and the pride and morale of their employees is of utmost importance to an ethical company. They are in constant work to maintain the reputation of the corporate firm and people working there with affirmative words and actions.

Leadership: An ethical leader would strive to be a role model and show other employees and subordinates where they are lacking and can improve to do the work better.

Respect for others: A corporate executive must have respect for other co workers and there should be a cohesive mutual respect in the firm.

Caring: The executives should have a caring attitude towards others and look after each other’s well being. They should have a positive attitude towards everyone. This will boost the morale of other co-workers.

Law Abiding: The management of the company has to be law abiding and follow all rules and maintain strict law and order within the organisation.