Role of ethics in modern business practices

Being ethical is a non-negotiable condition for long-term success in the corporate world today. Business decisions having wide ramifications for the stakeholders are often scrutinised in public. Several MNCs have lost their sheen due to immoral practices within and outside the board rooms. While the corporate indulgence in bribery, falsification of accounts, use of lower-grade raw materials in manufacturing, fake reviews on quality of products and services etc. may bring in increased revenues in the short run, the companies are bound to suffer in due course. Dr Srirang Jha, who teaches Ethics and Corporate Governance at Apeejay School of Management, believes that profit and ethics are facets of the proverbial golden coin that leads to everlasting happiness, peace, and prosperity.    

According to Dr Jha, transparency, accountability, and sustainability are the three pillars of ethical management practices. Contemporary organisations are trying their best to incorporate systems and processes to ensure morally appropriate conduct in their business transactions and social commitments. However, the leaders, managers, and employees need recurrent training and learning sessions to remain morally upright, says Dr Jha. Regular training and learning sessions are likely to convert the values espoused by the promoters into shared values across the organisation. Strong shared values often lead the managers and employees to follow call of duty while taking every big and small decisions while keeping in mind the utmost interest of the stakeholders. Shared moral values create an enabling ecosystem in the organisation.

Ethical framework not only helps in making right decisions but also empower the managers and employees to solve problems by using moral scrutiny of all the alternatives that might be available. Dr Jha says that the organisations need to nurture ethical problem-solving and righteous decision-making by incentivising morally appropriate behaviour and enforcing zero tolerance on immoral and inappropriate conduct. Indeed, ethical conduct should be foremost condition of employment in any organisation. At the same time, all the internal stakeholders also need to demonstrate impeccable integrity in all their actions within and outside the organisation. Moral conduct and integrity must go hand in hand. According to Dr Jha, morality without integrity is worthless in the contemporary organisational context across the world.

Role of ethics in streamlining the business practices in contemporary organisations is well established. However, it is not always easy for the leaders, managers, and employees to withstand ethical dilemma at their respective workplaces. On several occasions, the ethical dilemma may emerge due to conflict between organisational interest and national interest. Even at the risk of undermining the organisational interest, the manager would be expected to uphold the national interest. Dr Jha observes that managerial choices are quite complex at times. It is easy to choose between profit and profiteering, but it is surely difficult to forego organisational interest to pursue national interest as the manager is duty bound to work for the benefit of all the shareholders and stakeholders.        

Considering the importance of ethics in modern business practices, Apeejay School of Management has developed a comprehensive curriculum for nurturing ethical mindset among its students in sync with the mission of the institute. Students are exposed to Indian ethos and universal human values in Term 1 of the PGDM program. Further, they study CSR and Sustainability in Term 2.

A course on Business Ethics and Corporate Governance is offered in Term 6. Dr Jha, who is also the Area Chair of General Management, says that ethical issues are covered in all the core courses in the first year of the PGDM program. Interestingly, the graduating students of Apeejay School of Management take a pledge of ethical conduct during their convocation to reiterate their commitment towards ethical conduct throughout their professional career.