Ethics and Social Responsibility.The Role of Ethics in Strategic Planning

Ethics and Social Responsibility
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Ethics and social responsibility
Successful companies strive to maintain integrity in all their business dealings; these companies consider ethics and social responsibility as core activities within their strategic plans. Companies believe that ethics and social responsibility come first before profit; hence they ensure that adequate policies are in place to maintain their integrity. Ethical standards are important because they guide the company, giving it a sense of direction and a framework of operation.
Ethics, as defined by Andre and Velasquez are the measures used to determine the standard of right and wrong action. These include what individuals are expected to do in terms of their obligations, rights and specific virtues that are expected to benefit both the company and the society as a whole. Andre and Velasquez also define ethics as a process that guides people to continually review their moral beliefs and conduct helping them strive to achieve the highest moral standards (Velasquez et al., 2015).
The Role of Ethics in Strategic Planning
Ethics is an important element and should form part of the company's strategic plan, therefore, it is an obligation of every manager to reflect upon the ethical issues and ethical implications that might affect the company‘s operations, Ethical standards guide the company in striving to achieve its vision, mission, and the key objectives and also help in creating an ethical work environment (Visser & Tolhurst, 2017).
These ethical standards govern the company’s actions and that of its employees towards the desired strategic direction the company has set (Visser & Tolhurst, 2017). The ethical guidelines ensure that the company strategic plan is in line with the company's mission and it is in the best interest of the company's stakeholder which includes customers, vendors and the society where the company operates (Visser & Tolhurst, 2017).
The Enron corporate scandal and the collapse of the Wall Street banking house, Lehman Bros are some of the examples that prompted stringent measures to be taken to avoid a repeat of the same. Poor customer experiences of companies like Dell have increased the level of customers’ dissatisfaction with many of them developing mistrust in such business entities (Lins, Servaes, & Tamayo, 2017). The Enron corporate scandal and the collapse of the Wall Street banking house, Lehman Bros have further resulted in calls for strict regulations from the government.
Most companies need to adhere to the set ethical standards at all times by integrating specific values within their strategic plans. Such initiative is likely to build a good corporate image attracting more investments. A company's strategic plan should not be about compliance, it should go beyond self-regulation with adequate policies to manage its integrity (Lins, Servaes, & Tamayo, 2017)....