What is Responsible Enterprise and its Components?

The main purpose of the report is to highlight about responsible enterprise. The present report explains about what constitute responsible business or enterprise by stating real-life instances (Wang, Dou and Jia 2016). The main aim of the report is to elucidate about the importance of ethical business currently. It is important to know the fact about how ethical business can help the companies at the time of undertaking any decisions for the company. The objective of the report is to highlight the fact on how far Government contributes towards ethical business activities by playing the role of an influencer and enabler in real-life scenarios.

Responsible enterprise or business refers to a wide range or benefits, behaviors as well as outcomes where business organization can identify and pursue it in the near future. It is important to understand how green business operates in daily world (Van Oudheusden 2014). The answer to the above question is recycling and promotion of green campaigns. Responsible enterprise comprises of different components and this include waste, global warming, laws policies, recycling, health, business opportunities, ethics, human rights, advertisement as well as materials such as plastic, rubber and glass. Responsible enterprise is one of the important parts of recent market economy (Wang, Dou and Jia 2016). It is the responsibility of the companies to serve the needs of customers. Even though, the main motive behind any business is profit maximization and wealth minimization, still business ethics is an essential discipline of responsible enterprise. However, the discipline of responsible enterprise renders a toolkit of management practices that guides companies in the responsible pursuit of its vision of a desired future (Valackien? and Micevi?ien? 2015).

Every company should be engaged to be a part of responsible enterprise as it makes lot of sense. Responsible business provides benefits to both business as well as society (Tai and Chuang 2014). The term responsible business results in getting access to sustainable development. This particular concept refers to development that should have the ability to meet the need of present without compromising the future generations for meeting own needs. Responsible business is helpful to number of individuals and this includes community, marketplace, environment and workplace (Suliman, Al-Khatib and Thomas 2016).

Responsible business or enterprise directly links with corporate responsibility (Wang, Dou and Jia 2016). Being a responsible business already starts with managing business with ethics as well as integrity as it is guided by certain purpose and values. Responsible business means recognizing the fact where company understand the responsibility and opportunity and use it for influencing for positive change that extend into the value chain through the services provided to the selected suppliers (Saeidi et al. 2015).

Benefits of Ethical Business Practices

Responsible business directly links with sustainability business. Business enterprise is increasingly inclined for integrating expectations of the society into their business strategies. It is the responsibility of the management researchers to identify set of factors with the potential for facilitating effective integration of sustainability into organizational practices.  Responsible business directly links with corporate social responsibility. A sustainable enterprise aims at contributing to sustainable actions by delivering social as well as economic and environment benefits for achieving triple bottom line (Ridley-Duff and Bull 2015).

It is important to find out why it is essential for any managers working in an organization to act ethical. Ethical behavior had been always a serious concern since very ancient time. Addition to that, ethical behavior in business practice needs to be expanded and developed on continuous basis (Peteraf, Gamble and Thompson 2014). Nowadays, there had been several theoretical studies that illustrate on the factors as well as variables as it affects ethical behavior of individuals in business enterprise

Business enterprise needs to manage ethics in workplace and this can be done by establishing an ethics management program. McWilliams (2014) believes that ethics programs express corporate values that include codes and policies for guiding decisions and behavior. Most of the business enterprise has ethics programs that are made up of values, policies as well as activities that had positive impact on organization behavior. In addition, business enterprise needs to balance competing values as well as reconcile them and this becomes the basic purpose of an ethics management program (Wang, Dou and Jia 2016). The manager should use tools that are more practical as well as information can be gathered for understanding values and how to manage them at the same time

Community- It is important to understand the fact that business enterprise should make a positive impact on the community by using financial indicators. Some of the areas that need to be considered are employee-volunteering, payroll giving as well as corporate giving and staff & matched giving (Peteraf, Gamble and Thompson 2014).

Environment- Most of the business enterprise need to contribute to protect the environment. Some of the areas that need to be considered are energy consumption, waste disposal, green procurement, sustainable travel as well as waste consumption.

Workplace- Most of the business enterprise believes that their employees are their most valuable asset. Some of the areas that need to be covered by business enterprise are workforce diversity, local recruitment, work life balance and employability initiatives (Wang, Dou and Jia 2016).

Government’s Role in Promoting Ethical Business Practices

Marketplace- There are several ways where company can bring improvement in their behavior in the marketplace. Some of the areas that need to be covered by business enterprise are supplier diversity, developing socially responsible products or services and ethical procurement (Peteraf, Gamble and Thompson 2014).

The ethics of an individual self-fulfillment as well as achievement is considered as the most powerful current especially in modern society (Suliman, Al-Khatib and Thomas 2016). It is noted that individualism cannot be treated as just consumerist and it is even moral. From the perspective of many people, social progress is measured in terms of expansion of individual choice within this secretive globe. With increased constant changing of competitive environment, it is important for the companies to search for new methods so that they can face competition rather than use of traditional ways by offering wider range of products. Responsible business directly links with social enterprise.  The conceptual model gives a comprehensive way for integrating sustainability as well as social responsibility into business practices.

Ethics plays major role in any business and they should find ways to make their business ethical in every possible ways. It is important for these companies to make use of these ethical behavior models so that their managers and employees can properly follow the rules of the company and know the working environment (Peteraf, Gamble and Thompson 2014). Most of the business enterprise is developing guidelines to train as well as educate employees on proper ethical behavior in the workplace. Therefore, ethical guidelines is one of the way that can help relieve the pressure a business faces from consumers, competitors as well as economic market at the time of conducting the business.

The significance of ethical business is explained from various viewpoints in this section. Most of the managers are of the opinion that ethics programs tend to be very expensive as well as equally societal rewarding. The particular research here explains the fact that there is positive linkage between the variables that need to be taken into consideration (Suliman, Al-Khatib and Thomas 2016). On analysis, it is noted that there is link present between profitability as well as ethics.

In order to understand the gap between the business ethics as well as concern about the managers, it need to pay attention on how these managers think about business ethics before it became a formal discipline. As rightly put forward by Manning (2018), credo specifically portray the highest values where business aspires to operate. Furthermore, code of ethics depicts the ethical rules of operation. On the contrary, some business ethicists disagree with the fact that codes have any value. This ethicist is of the opinion that too much emphasis upon codes is not necessary and is not influential in managing ethics at workplace (Jondle, Ardichvili and Mitchell 2014). Most of the ethicists are of the opinion that it is the developing and continuing dialogue that goes around with the value of codes that is mostly significant by nature

Tools and Management Practices for Responsible Enterprise

For instance, if a given business enterprise is too large that takes into account several programs or departments, then the company may want to develop an overall corporate code of ethics as well as separating code to guide each of the program or department (Buckley and Casson 2016). Addition to that, codes should be developed from any of the department such as Human resources and Legal, and this is what is frequently done by business enterprise. However, codes are insufficient if planned only to guarantee that policies are legal. Staff members of any given business organization must see these ethical programs being driven by the top management. Both code of ethics and code of conduct mostly are same in most of the business enterprise based on culture of organization and operations to get an understanding about ultimate level of specificity in the codes (Jondle and Ardichvili 2017).

According to Flammer (2015), business ethics plays important role as a matter to resolve conflicts where one option appears to be the clear choice. By taking a case example, case studies are often represented where employee is faced whether or not to abuse and break terms of contract. Furthermore, ethical dilemmas faced by managers are more related to real life scenario as well as it is highly complex that has no clear guidelines (Peteraf, Gamble and Thompson 2014). Addition to that, culture encompass with values, behaviors as well as norms that prevails in a business enterprise. However, ethics is all about moral values or a value that signifies what is right and what is wrong. Thus, cultural assessments should be precisely valuable that can be understood at the time of assessing the moral values in business enterprise (Ferrell and Fraedrich 2015).

As opined by Carroll (2015), the ethics program is fundamentally useless unless all human resources are trained properly. Addition to that, nature of the system may invite suspicion if not handled openly as well as honestly. Furthermore, human resources need to be handled properly by the business and these are real asset for any business enterprise.

Government plays an important role where they encourage ethical business at workplace and play the role of influencer, enabler in great ways (Jondle, Ardichvili and Mitchell 2014). The less the intervention from the government, the more is the success rate of ethical business as too much of restrictions can distort the free market conditions. However, government plays major role in encouraging companies to act in an ethical manner in terms of both encouragement as well as coercion. It is difficult to believe that all companies will behave ethically without enforcement of law or regulations (Edgeman et al. 2016). The government thereby needs to act as an influencer and enabler so that business should carry out the operations in an ethical way and there is a smooth operation in current marketplace.

Government plays the role of an influencer where they are of the opinion that some degree of legislation is important to ensure that companies comply with ethical obligations (Jondle, Ardichvili and Mitchell 2014). In that way, public will not suffer from any of the dishonest or illegal business practices. In addition, the main aim of these rules is to restrict the practice of bribing planning authorities for circumventing planning as well as zoning laws. For instance, most of the unethical business has engaged in such practices and without explicit laws that restrict cheating. Here, the small business who does not engage in illegal activities can be kept at a competitive advantage position (Craft 2016). 

Government plays the role of an enabler where they have a supervisory authority in the field of business ethics (Cheng, Ioannou and Serafeim 2014). In addition, anti-competitive behavior can take place in case there is merging of large business enterprise or that business has very substantial market share. Therefore, the government should monitor as well as supervise such mergers that are subject to such antitrust law.  Government can encourage ethical business by incentivizing tax breaks or by imposing surcharges on companies that have high levels of emissions (Jondle, Ardichvili and Mitchell 2014). In addition, green companies who are engaged in environmentally friendly practices and demonstrating of green awareness should be rewarded and encouraged by government as a part of its environmental policy. Therefore, if companies are financially penalized for wasting energy or improper disposal of sate, then these companies are less likely to engage in these practices (Clapp and Rowlands 2014).

Government plays major role in ensuring that the business operates in an ethical way. It is next to impossible for the government to look after the operations to such an extent that they could force all the business to behave or act ethically. This type of supervision can only negatively affect the smoother operations in the market. Therefore, government agencies are responsible to hold the duty to promote ethics as far as much is possible without unduly restricting business in any way (Jondle, Ardichvili and Mitchell 2014).

Conclusion 

At the end of the study, it is concluded that every business organization should be equally responsible to act ethically in whatever they deal with in their operations. The above study properly highlights how ethical people have the ability to differentiate between right and wrong things. People should first know how to differentiate between right and wrong and then only they can set an example of good conduct. It goes in a business setting where being ethical just means to apply principles of honesty as well as fairness to relationships with employees and workers. Equal treatment is important everywhere at workplace and there should be no biasness present within the work. It is important for the responsible enterprise to think of customer loyalty and this is because consumers may let a company take advantage once. However, if by chance, consumers feel that they have been cheated or being overcharged, then they will never come to that place again and the company may lose one loyal customer. The customer can even spread his experience through word of communication to nearby friends, relatives and family members. It is for this reason why companies should value loyal customer base, as it is one of the key to get access to long-range business success, as serving existing customer does not include any marketing cost as compared to acquisition of new customers. A company’s reputation for ethical behavior help them to create more positive image in current marketplace as well as it can help in bringing new customers by word of mouth communication. On the other hand, a reputation for unethical dealings will negatively affect the chance of that company to get access to new customers and this is quite feasible nowadays with the emergence of social networking sites. It is because now dissatisfied customers are writing about the negative experience in the social networking sites and this adversely affect the reputation of the company.

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