Coexistence of Professional Ethics and business. Topic itself opens a floor for philosophical debate.

It’s always a common topic among business students and academic experts. 

Most of such discussion begins with a question “Can Professional Ethics and business co-exist”?

Indeed, it’s a question that  arises from a misconception that people think business is meant for only financial profit.

Of course, it’s not! 

Business is not only meant for financial profit; rather business and professional ethics shall always run concurrent for a sustainable growth.

We can see many unhealthy things in business around us where people are only concerned about maximizing their financial profits regardless of ethics and moral values. Sometimes it gives them more profit for short term but it’s really not giving better results for  long run. 

Whatever the business you do, let it be trading, service industry, Health care, production, managerial, banking or even money lending. You should be committed to keep ethics in dealings.we know if ethics are poor at the top,that behavior is copied down through the organization which lead to a serious threat.

You may  feel your business growth is much slower or it’s not accelerating when you are committed to keep ethics and moral values in your business. But indeed, your business, might have taken attention among customers and It might help for a sustainable growth. In other words, business without ethics is like a mirage. Even if you think there is a greenery apart after your business, the truth is,it is not really there.

Whenever you think ,let this ethics stay away from business, then you yourself is starting to endanger your life and of your generations. When you take ethics away from business normally it’s dealing with illegal things, helping mafia and trying to break authority regulations.

Just imagine if everybody starts to keep ethical values away from their business and only concerned about their profit. What you can expect from Medical professionals and medicine suppliers? How we can trust that buildings and infrastructure developed by unethical engineers? How you can think about just go out and dine where unethical chefs preparing food for you? How you can learn from teachers they are not committed with ethics and social responsibility?

 Likewise we can see a number of ill practices like some blackmarket players deliberately creating shortages  in legal goods to force people to purchase from them, high pricing when demands increase etc…where ethics gets zero value.

In the other hand, we can see lot of business running success with professional ethics and commitment with society. Corporates with social responsibilities. The biggest example is  Tata Group which is an Indian multinational conglomerate company.  66% of Tata Son’s equity is held by the Tata Trusts and dividends flow directly to support the philanthropic work of the Trusts. Over the past century and a half, the Tata group has calibrated its mission to address India’s most urgent needs.

 In response of lack of required covid-19 test kits in India, Tata group joined their hand with government and developed a faster and economic testing kits but without tolerating quality and reliability of test.

All such activities shows how co-existence of professional ethics and Business is not just a wondering question, but reflecting the reality of sustainable growth of business with a strong commitment to ethical values.

We have witnessed a lot of actions during this Covid-19 pandemic situations where professional ethics and business run parallel for the betterment of society.

Thousands of professional and business establishments joined their hands together to fight against this pandemic. 

So, it’s again proved that Ethics and Business should run concurrently. Always! 

– Farhana
BSc, 1st Year
SDM College, Ujjire