Business Ethics and Human Values: An Indian Perspective

Abstract

The field of ethics involves systematizing, defending and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior. In any organization, from top management to employees at all levels, ethics is considered as everybody’s business. It is not just only achieving high levels of economic performance, but also to conduct one of business’s most important social challenges, ethically, at the same time simultaneously. “The more one knows ethics, the more it is used and the more useful it becomes” - Plato. The quote by Plato is a reminder to just how important ethics is and how important it is to educate you on proper ethical practices. Many Indian companies now have recognized the importance of integrity, transparency, and open communications. They believe that the goodwill resulting from adopting and successfully implementing a code of business ethics will, in the long run, translate into economic gains. Human values refer to the orientation towards what is considered desirable or preferable by people living in a society. This paper takes an interdisciplinary approach to provide a theoretical overview of how business ethics deals with the values and significance of ethical values for business success. The paper also indicates the Ethical Consciousness in Business along with a case study to support and understand this approach.Most companies started ethics programs to be compliant with the Guidelines. Over the past 10 years, it has evolved from a reactive to a more proactive approach to corporate ethics. In the past year, with the recent failure of many global companies due in large part to ethics violations, it has become obvious that proactively managing corporate ethics is good business, and directly affects the bottom line. An effort has been made to explain the practical implementation part of ethics and values in the Indian corporate world in the later part of the paper. Ethical issues will dominate with more technological development; hence ethical codes have to be formulated in all corporate entities. The concluding part of the paper throws light on enhancing ethical environment in the organizations.