IMPORTANCE OF ETHICS IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP

IMPORTANCE OF ETHICS IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP

The word ‘ethics’ has its origin in the Greek word ‘ethos’ meaning character; norms, ideals or morals prevailing in a group or society. Ethics is concerned with what is right and what is wrong in human behaviour judged on the basis of a standard form of conduct/behaviour of individuals, as approved by society in a particular field of activity. Ethics may be viewed as the entire body of moral values that society attaches to the actions of human beings. Ethics can also refer to codes or other system for controlling.

Business ethics refer to the socially determined moral principles which should govern business activities. Business ethics are: charging fair prices from customers, using fair weights for measurement of commodities, giving fair treatment to workers and earning reasonable profits. A business person behaves ethically when her or his actions are upright and serve the interest of society. Business ethics is a form of applied ethics or professional ethics that examines ethical principles and moral or ethical problems that arise in a business environment. It applies to all aspects of business conduct and is relevant to the conduct of individuals and entire organizations.

Ethics has very important values in entrepreneurship ventures. This is particularly essential in decision making process. Ethical conscience reminds entrepreneurs to make trustworthy and profitable entrepreneurship decisions. Awareness of moral and ethical principles will help the entrepreneurs to solve challenging ethical problems. Those who follow ethical principles will continue their business practices for a long time.

An entrepreneur is actually running his own business and being a businessman he has some obligation of a business to meet his economic and legal responsibilities. The world economy requires innovators and entrepreneurs to both advance and sustain global community. While ethics of an entrepreneur and businesses undertake the plan and consider social responsibility a vital event in their activities, everybody benefits. Therefore an entrepreneur has to become aware about his role and strive to obey them in perfect manner which would be beneficial to him as well as the community as a whole. Following activities will help the entrepreneurs to protect the ethical values for the progress of their business ;

(1)              Avoid breaking criminal law in one’s work related activity

(2)             Providing good quality and correct quantity of goods to consumers.

(3)            Taking necessary actions to avoid pollution during production.

(4)             Paying  reasonable wages and salary to workers.

(5)            Avoid promoting child labour for production purpose and other activities in the firm.

(6)            Sustainable and judicious use of natural resources.

(7)             Give maximum employment opportunities to the peoples in the locality of business.

(8)            Collect maximum resources ( may be raw materials ) from the society and try to avoid importing of it.