{"id":762,"date":"2017-03-27T06:00:46","date_gmt":"2017-03-27T06:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/?p=762"},"modified":"2017-03-27T14:45:51","modified_gmt":"2017-03-27T14:45:51","slug":"mwr-not-business-personal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/making-work-real\/2017\/03\/mwr-not-business-personal\/","title":{"rendered":"MWR: It\u2019s Not Business, It\u2019s Personal"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"University<\/a>
University of Southampton Business School student, Conor Chapman, discusses the ethics of business.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I know, that\u2019s not the statement that is usually declared, however it represents how for me certain aspects of ethical business are backwards.<\/p>\n

In my opinion, the idea of acting ethically in business as \u2018doing the right thing when that will cost more than we want to pay\u2019 (Richmond, 2013) contradicts with the more common statement as \u2018Profit (being) the ultimate aim of almost all business firms\u2019 (Sivagnanam and Srinivasan, 2010). Therefore, it makes it very difficult for a business to stay ethical and this can be represented by cases from modern business.<\/p>\n

America\u2019s largest bank JPMorgan faced a scandal this year in which they were accused of corruption in March 2016 as Obama refused to enforce America\u2019s criminal laws against them (Chaitman and Gotthoffer, 2016). JPMorgan clearly disregard the importance of ethics because in May 2012 one of their traders known as the \u2018London Whale\u2019 lost them $2bn on a credit derivatives index affecting market prices. Also in 2012, their CEO Jamie Dimon was found \u2018crucial in persuading the US government to water down the new regulations, in particular the so-called Volcker rule\u2019 (Treanor and Neville, 2012). The \u2018London Whale\u2019 incident in May 2012 caused them to one month later lose a greater amount of capital and was estimated \u2018could total as much as $9 billion\u2019 (Silver-Greenberg and Craig, 2012).<\/p>\n

Therefore, based on this example of JPMorgan I feel it can be of interest to discuss whether it\u2019s worthy for a future organisation to attempt to be ethical through their business plan and innovation of strategies. To argue this idea, I will outline both the benefits and constraints that come with running a company ethically.<\/p>\n

One of the main benefits is ethical conduct towards customers and stakeholders; this can be supported by a case where Intel recognised a production flaw in one of its chips and felt the \u2018need to put stakeholders ahead of its profits\u2019 as it cost them $1bn for accumulated delay and repair (Ferrell et al., 2012). However, they managed to \u2018maintain high levels of customer satisfaction\u2019 which CRM recognizes the importance of (Baran et al., 2006). Instead of acting irresponsibly and producing a low-grade product that could tarnish the brand and potentially lose them substantially more amounts of income.<\/p>\n

A major constraint of running an ethical business would be that it also requires an accompanying of moral constraints which can \u2018limit what may be done in the pursuit of non-moral goals\u2019 (Malachowski, 2001). For example; you\u2019re strictly instructed to follow the code of practice which has a strong effect on business operations e.g. trading which must be considered by the Commissioner to \u2018prepare and disseminate to such persons as he considers appropriate codes of practice\u2019 (Office and Britain, 1998).<\/p>\n

To conclude, I feel that overall future businesses should attempt to become ethical because if caught out the recent ramifications could be proven very costly and \u2018Business is as ethical as it has ever been\u2019 (McCloskey, 2016).<\/p>\n

Conor Chapman studies <\/em>Accounting and Finance (with placement)<\/em><\/a> at Southampton Business School. The views in this article are those of the author. This article is part of the ‘Making Our Work Real’ series. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know, that\u2019s not the statement that is usually declared, however it represents how for me certain aspects of ethical business are backwards. In my opinion, the idea of acting ethically in business as \u2018doing the right thing when that will cost more than we want to pay\u2019 (Richmond, 2013) contradicts with the more common statement as \u2018Profit (being) the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99256,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1030568],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-making-work-real","column","threecol"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99256"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=762"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":814,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762\/revisions\/814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}