Ethics In Australian Small Business

Abstract

paper will outline the directions that have been and are being taken in two current research projects into ethics in the small and very small business sector. The foci of the research are the ethical perspectives held by Australian micro and home-based business operators, and the impact of publicly promoted ethical stances on small business performance. The first study addresses ethics in the micro business sector (Dawson and Breen 1999). It aims to examine the relative importance of different ethical values in running a business, and to explore micro business owners' views about key small business issues from an ethical standpoint. I shall begin by specifying some terms, and sketching the significance of the small business sector. I will then describe the structure of each project in turn, and outline what these investigations suggest to date. In Australia, a non-agricultural small business is defined as an enterprise that employs up to 20 persons, except in manufacturing where a business employing up to 100 persons may be classified as 'small'. On this basis, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (1997-98) classifies almost 94 percent of all Australian non-agricultural businesses as small busi nesses. A micro business is one that is independently owned or operated, and is either non-employing, or employs fewer than five people (ABS 1997-98). There are more than 670,000 micro businesses in Australia, comprising nearly 85 percent of all non-agricultural small business, and