Corporations Have a Responsibility to Do the Right Thing

In the contemporary business world, organizations are striving to create and maintain a competitive advantage over their competitors in the dynamic business environment. In the pursuit of survival and development in business has led to organizations to be involved in practices that put people and the environment at risk, thus raising ethical concerns. These risky activities range from collecting data that compromise the privacy of people to sourcing materials from nations with weak labor and environmental regulations. " When your job is to teach corporations to do the right thing " is an article posted on 26/06/2019 in CNN business by Jeanne Sahadi. It outlines the ethical obligation of corporations as Americans are not only concerned with compliance of regulations but also sustainability. It describes the role of the ethic officers in preventing the leaders of the organization as well as the employees from making unethical decisions and actions. 

The ethical concerns have made several companies put an extra focus on both their moral standards on an external and internal perspective. This has resulted in the formalization of ethics in companies. According to the Ethics & Compliance Initiative CEO, Patricia Harned, many companies have created a c-suite role that deals with ethics in organizations. Compliance is about meeting all the laws and regulations, and it often overlaps with ethics as it is merely the right thing to do. However, ethics involves more than compliance, as it sometimes incorporates technologies and activities outside legal regulations. Ethics comprises of customer respect, the corporate culture, and respect as well as how the organizations respect the dynamic social norms. Some organizations do not have a formal ethics role, and it is the responsibility of the top leadership to instill ethical principles across all the levels of the organization. Ethical organizations have an advantage of building and maintaining a reliable brand name and public image that promotes the development of the organization. 

References 

Here is the article link in CNN Business News 

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/26/success/business-chief-ethics-officer/index.html