Ethics and the ‘Other’

Volume 14, Number 4 Article by Dipankar Gupta December, 2002

Ethics and the ‘Other’ :

What stops top management from embracing business ethics systems, according to Dipankar Gupta, Professor, JNU and Consultant to KPMG, is the lack of clarity on the subject. All too often, business ethics is equated with religion, spiritualism, or philanthropy. In reality, ethics is a practical approach towards attaining goals in an environment that involves other people. Every right thinking executive would like to function in an environment where norms are explicit and elaborate. The institution of norms, business principles, codes of conduct, mission and vision statements is a call to business ethics and when instituted in a dialogic process the institutional edifice has the buy in of ‘others’ across divisions and levels. Ethics is essential if one wants to ‘truly know’ the organisation, a process in which the stakeholder view of business gets its fullest expression. Business ethics is thus a practical and hardy management tool and organisations who want to do well in the long run might well begin with crafting a business ethics manual.

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