Ethical Conduct Implementation Plan

Ethics concerns itself on what is wrong and what is right. It establishes a clear cut distinction between the two variables. In business ethics is very important. Business must carry its activities and operations in an ethical way. The society gives the business a charter to exist and so it must carry out its operations in a clear transparent and consistent way with generally acceptable standards. A business should not concentrate on profit motives only and forget to promote the welfare of all stakeholders. For instance any business should take care and address the negative externalities that are occasioned by its activities. A business, having global operations, must make sure that it observes the international standards of ethics and good conduct. This places an immense task on the management because the managers have to familiarize themselves with the expectations of the national and international stakeholders and how to satisfy each of those stakeholders. However, in international operations there are some rules and regulations that govern the operations of businesses especially through the international bodies such as International Labor Organization and the World Trade Organization. But it should be noted that the business in its individual capacity must find out how to conduct its activities in a manner that is ethical and acceptable by all its stakeholders, (Borgerson, 2008).

In coming up with the implementation plan we shall address ourselves to the ethical issues concerning the board of directors, employees, consumers and the vendors. These are some of the most important stakeholders in a business. The aim is to elucidate how they handle business in a manner that is deemed ethical, legal and generally acceptable. We are going to describe the above based on the parameters supplied in the question.

Legal Regulations for Conducting Overseas Business

There are rules and regulations followed when conducting business operations abroad. An overseas operation takes into account many factors and rules set up by the government where the business is domiciled. There are rules on foreign exchange conversion, the structure of ownership, repatriations of profits and dividends and labor laws. The business must stick to rules governing the trade and business in the jurisdictions within which it is operating. Ethics requires that business should not violate these rules because by this it will be acting outside the rules of what is good and legitimate. For instance, it should adhere to labor laws in the country where it is operating. The businessmen should pay fair wages and salaries to its employees and establish better working conditions. They should charge fair prices for the goods and services in accordance to the pricing policies of the countries in which the business is operating.

Ethical Code of Conduct for Employees and Vendors

Employees are very vital for growth of an enterprise. It is them who are the face of the business and hence should portray themselves well to boost the image of the business. The vendors on the other hand are equally important because they are the people who supply goods to the business and they also do vendor financing to the business. There are ethical issues surrounding these two stakeholders. Regarding the employees, they should be faithful to the goals and objectives of the business. They should apply reasonable business acumen when carrying out their duties to make sure that the business benefits from their services and they also justify their salaries and wages. They should also treat customers well because it is customers who are the cornerstone of any business. The vendors on their part should make sure that they supply high quality inventories to the business. They should also be reliable, dependable and trustworthy thus they should not delay supplies so that the business fails to meet the orders and demand of its customers. This is what ethics require of the vendors. The vendors should also live up to the agreements that they have signed with the business especially regarding credit supplies, they should charge fair prices for the inventories that they supply to the business. This means that they should not in any way exploit the business in pricing of their supplies (Kingsolver, 2008).

Right and Wrong in a Legal Dealing

It’s important to note that what is legal may not be ethical but what is ethical is legal. There are business transactions that though being legal they may be unethical when we consider the common good of people and overall effects on them. For instance, arbitration is a legal business and the speculators and investors are allowed in law to do it but when arbitration occasions depreciation of a currency and ultimately leads to high cost of living by leading to inflation that affects many people, then this is unethical and should be discouraged. The business should be wary of legal activities that are unethical owing to their effects.

Illegal Activities

Whereas the law could be very clear on the activities that are legal and illegal, many people do take part in unscrupulous business activities. These activities could be for instance drug trafficking, currency smuggling, trade on game products among others. The motivation for such acts is the huge profitability and low costs involved. It also results from ignorance of the ethics since the participants do not consider the impacts of their activities on the society. Business operating on international scale should not undertake illegal activities since the consequences are dire once discovered (Moon, 2001).

Ethical Issues and Board of Directors

There are a lot of ethical expectations from the board of directors given that they give a green light to management to undertake various activities. The board should ensure that they apply reasonable business acumen when running the business. They should apply their skills and competency when formulating policies. They should also not benefit individually from the contracts entered between the business and the outsiders contrary to the provisions of articles and memorandum of association of the business. They should be held accountable for the policies that leads to losses in the business. They should ensure that the active management carries out their activities in accordance with the laws.

In conclusion it is very vital that the business adhere to ethical issue that governs the operations of the business in the national and international jurisdictions. The business should take note of activities that are legal but they are unethical in a given respect. It should also observe the expectations of all stakeholders so that it tries to satisfy them in the spirit of entrenching the ethics and morality in business,( Grabel, 2003).