In: Operations Management
Solution:
Business ethics in developed countries are concretely defined and followed. The developed countries have specialized bodies to ensure that the businesses care carried out as per their code of conduct and they are the compliance bodies to the the business ethics. Also, in developed countries there will beorganizations that act as ombudsman to the issues regarding business etics. Hence, the boundaries of ethics are concretely defined and hence it becomes easy to categorise between ethical and unethical practices. Hence, this is why the state of business ethics in developed countries is good and thus they rank higher in their rankings for best places to work and ease of doing business because of ethical practices being followed.
Consider the example of Google, it follows appropriate business ethics policies and they have their own code of conduct that directs the activities of the employees. There is a compliance department in Google whos' job is to check if the practices are followed as per code of conduct and penalise if they are not followed.
Whereas in developing countries such as China or India the business ethics policies may not have been concretely defined. These rules are generally loosely stated and hence it is difficult to make the distinction between ethical and unethical practices. This does not signify that all the businesses are unethical, it states that the business ethics in small companies are not concrete and hence the work culture and environment can become toxic for the employees. Hence, this is why the work culture in many of the companies may just not be favourable for the employees due to lack of ethical standards.
Consider the case of an Indian company, Reliance Industries. The company has ethical practices department but however it may not be sufficient to ensure complete ethics. The company and the work culture focuses least on the business ethics.
HEnce, this is how the business ethics are handled by companies in developed and developing countries.