by Steve Burden

Created on: October 22, 2010   Last Updated: May 31, 2011

A person set on profit at all costs, will have no care for the niceties of ethics. In the name of business profitability, a call for restraint will not moderate the drive to make a killing. By contrast, an over-sensative, ethically-minded person, will worry so much over the fairness of a transaction that a deal will be reckoned a stain on his conscience if it could be judged in any way unethical. The likely outcome is that he will quickly jeopardise his own ability to operate as a business.

Between these extremes, most business is carried on. Since the marketplace will not pay over the odds for products or services, businesses who insist on charging higher prices, as a rule do not get the sales. Equally, companies whose prices are too low, even if they manage a healthy turnover, will not be profitable enough to remain in buisiness. 

Thus it is, that the relationship between business and ethics, is being played out all the time. The marketplace is where prices find a level that is roughly midway between too high and too low. There is always comment in the business media, if electricity or gas providers fail to pass on to their customers a fall in the price they pay to their suppliers. When the price of oil goes up or down, the price of petrol is always affected. To motorists however, it seems the price goes up more often than it comes down. Even if an explanation is given, the feeling that there are unethical deals being struck, is very hard to rebut.   

The Slave Trade showed how easily ethical concerns can be obscured and set aside for the sake of 'business profitability'. Though slavery was abolished in England as far back as 1807, there are even today, dark goings-on in the illegal trade of human-trafficing. We should never underestimate the evil let loose in the earth, when there are no ethical restraints in the business arena.

At the other end of the spectrum, there is a huge range of not-for-profit-organisations. They exist to meet needs that are local, social, environmental or global. Despite genuine and honest attempts to do good, a clear business-like way of operating has to be in place to ensure efficiency and to guard against fraud. Possibly, the public will be less tolerant of a charity that is found to be squandering funds or 'cooking the books', than for a business that is operating fraudulently or is blind to ethical concerns.

In seeking to maximise profits, business leadership should ensure that ethical considerations are taken seriously. With an accepted code of ethics driving its strategies for growth, a business will generate ethically cleaner profits, and will thereby demonstrate that business and ethics are not mutually exclusive. Ethics are not supposed to remain an abstract idea in our heads. 

It is time for a proper, grown-up, business-wide, ethical approach to doing business. To achieve this, an ethical perspective has to come from the very top of business leadership. Business and ethics might appear to be opposites, but if they can bring their essential qualities together, a course can be plotted to negotiate the stormy seas of politics and economics, towards the safe harbour of ethical profitability. The relationship between business and ethics can be a strong, positive force for good in the tricky and unpredictable world of commerce.

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