The night before my first class in Sauder, I had a little chat with my friend who is also a first year Sauder kid, and we were both excited and eager about new school and lessons. He told me that in the end what we were going to do was learning how to sell ourselves at the highest prices. I did not disapprove him because I had not gone far enough to know what I would go for in the end, but I told him the thing that I told myself many times before and after choosing to pursue my higher education in business was I was here to seek for sustainable values in business.
Many people say that “Business is all about making profits.” In my viewpoint, profit is the crucial element for the existence of the firm, but the highest goals for business are the moral values it will bring to the society. That is also the reason why business ethics articles are frequently opened to the public.
So, what is business ethics? There are tons of explaining ways for this word, but I like how this concept is stated on yourdictionary.com. It said, “The definition of business is the set of moral rules that govern how business operates, how business decisions are made and how people are treated.” Business makes money from the society; thus, it must have social responsibilities in return.
Among fierce profit battles, some companies might take that regulation aside. For example, back to 2008, the world society witnessed a vibrational scandal about Chinese milk contained high melamine amount. Some Chinese dairy companies added water to plain milk to increase the quantity. To pass the protein test, they have to add in melamine which is white and rich of nitrogen. The use of melamine contaminated products also led to the fatalities of 6 infants by kidney damage and sickness of 300,000 babies in China.
Besides, the world also honours many ethical companies and corporations. We can mention about how Starbucks treat their customers and employees. They do treat the customers with respect and dignity, while never cut down on employees’ wage, insurance and think little of safety, healthy as they care about human rights. Alternatively, there is Ethical Fruit Company which has all products are organic. Alternatively, we can discuss non-profit projects by Google such as Google Earth, Google +, YouTube, and Google Ad Grants. I think the bigger the company is, the more they concern about social problems, in due to creating their impacts on society.
To conclude, business is considered successful if only it can balance between its net worth and sustainable values to the community.
Resources:
- http://www.who.int/csr/media/faq/QAmelamine/en/
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11372917
- http://globalassets.starbucks.com/assets/eecd184d6d2141d58966319744393d1f.pdf
- http://www.foodbev.com/news/17-of-the-worlds-most-ethical-companies/
- https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/google-for-nonprofits-tools-change-marketing-list