Question

1. Should companies impose their corporate values on employees?

2. Should a company be held responsible for the actions of its investors or does a duty to shareholders trump such ethical questions?

3. Should companies reject investors that they perceive as misaligned with their values?

4. Is it a corporation’s role to take a public stance on a political situation?

Answer 1

1. Corporate values represent the ethics that a company functions on. In a world with immense diversity of views and opinions, corporate values help an organization align the morals of its employees, brings harmony in its culture and keeps the organization as a whole together by defining accountability on each level.

Corporate values also distinguish one organization from its competitors that forms a part of the brand. Employees, being a vital cog in the company machinery should be coherent in terms of the ethics and ways of the organization and this makes corporate values vital for them to work together and generate valuable output.

2. Investor actions can affect a company positively or even be detrimental to its progress. In the corporate world although the primary aim of a company is to earn profits for its shareholders, yet if the values that a company defines itself with should not be trampled by the actions of its investors.

A company that is socially responsible can epitomize its brand name, that could ultimately be most valuable in the long term. Such an organization enhances not just customer retention but employee loyalty and motivation. Hence, acting responsibly to investors actions may lose some investors but can on the other hand help gain like minded and better class of investors for the future.

3. An investor with values different from that of the company that he invests in are bound to conflict in the long term. Larger an organization is, stronger and deeper enshrined its values should be for its success. Since these core values define the organization's ethics and maintains the stakeholders' trust in the functioning on the organization, it is vital that these values are not compromised from powerful entities like investors just for the sake of larger profit, as this might not just dissuade customers but also shake the loyal employee base. The core values of a firm separates it from its competitors and makes it unique. A distortion in those values could only scare customers and lead to loss of trust.

4. Corporations are long term entities while politics and political views of people or majorities are transient. Hence, a company should not align themselves to a political situation. Individuals in a company can have political stance but the company as a whole should be neutral as it might not only hurt its consumer base but also isolate its employees and lead to friction with society.