There is a direct relationship between business and ethics and it is not subjective. All business must rely on four "ethical principles" to have and continue successful operations. These four "ethical principles" are:

(1) CREDIBILITY - Business must be credible to be successful. A product or service must be what it says it is and do what it says it can do. For example, a household cleaning product that purports to clean certain stains must achieve the desired result or the consuming public will deem it a failure and it will sit on store shelves. Furthermore, this loss of credibility serves as a notice to consumers to be suspect of further products or services from this same business. Credibility is an ethic that business must have to survive.

(2) INTEGRITY - Business must have honesty at all levels. Honesty equates with integrity. No matter how well a product or service performs, if the public finds it or the producing business lacks integrity, this product or service is doomed. For example, a product or service performs satisfactorily but the consuming public finds that it contains an agent that is harmful to humans or animals. Immediate loss of integrity follows not only for the product but this business's other products and services as well. Integrity is an integral ethic that is woven into the fabric of the business bottom line.

(3) SERVICE - Service is an ethic that is vital as far as the consuming public is concerned. Regardless of the move to self-service, consumers vastly prefer service when buying a product or service. They want to be waited upon and be informed by knowledgeable personnel from that business. How many times have you made a purchase to only find when you return home that it is the wrong size, wrong type, wrong everything when if you had been given knowledge (aka) service at the time of sale, your time would not have been wasted. Service is still an important ingredient in todays business world.

(4) COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT - Consumers want community involvement from business who sell in their local communities. Whether it is charitable contributions, employment of local workers, or just doing the "right thing" for their local community, community involvement is an ethic important to the local population.

Finally, these four "ethical principles" are the bedrock of business success. The consuming public understands these four ethical principles all too well and the business who fails to adhere to them ultimately will perish.

Learn more about this author, Larry Stith.
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