FOLLOW THEM OTHERWISE NO ONE FOLLOWS YOU
– BY YUGAANT AHUJA
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Business Ethics refer to the values and principles followed by an organization while carrying out its operations. In today’s rapidly changing world where the shift is from caveat emptor to caveat venditor, it becomes indispensable for the firms to perform their businesses ethically.
The most important aspect of ethical values is the corporate social responsibility (CSR). It includes guidelines that a business is expected to follow to delineate a sustainable operation and contribute to the social well-being of a society and develop strong bonds with people. What happens if a company does not heed attention to these values and indiscriminately carries out its operations and exploit the public? Well, it’s not a rocket science question. It will lose its consumers and would find a major block to sell its equity or preference shares. It might be true that in the short term, it earns huge amounts of profit but would surely tumble in the long run. Isn’t it a motive of any business to grow and operate for a long run?
There have been many incidents in the past which are a testimony to the fact that businesses no matter how small or big have to reflect upon their doings regularly and take adequate steps in their full capacity to correct them.
Mylan Pharmaceuticals increased the price of EpiPens, a lifesaving drug claiming the hike to be a pricing strategy. This move was not at all acceptable by the public as the price increased from roughly $100 to $600. In my opinion, a company like this should not be allowed to carry its operations because it affected the lives of many people. Even though the company wanted to upsurge its profits, this substantial increase is just not acceptable. Playing with citizens’ lives can never be the agenda which indirectly was in this case. In my opinion the company should not have increased prices on the same product. It was actually trying to play with humans. Therefore there was a huge public uproar. Due to this, share prices drastically tanked. This act had a negative impact on the pharmaceutical market. If the pharma company wants to create a positive image in the market ,its public relations team needs to pull up its socks and take immediate steps such as
- managing social media feeds to enlighten public about its operations.
- maintain healthy relations with press and discuss about the steps to be taken to diminish this reputation loss.
- explain comprehensively the reasons for price hike
- make company’s seniors accountable for this act
- apologize to public and make sure that unnecessary hikes do not happen in future
Citations
News, CBC. “EpiPen Price Furor Heats up in U.S.” CBCnews. CBC/Radio Canada, 24 Aug. 2016. Web. 23 Sept. 2016. <http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/epipen-price-1.3734214>.
“Business.” Make a Meme. N.p., n.d.<https://makeameme.org/meme/business-ethics>.