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Ethics and Greenwashing

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Ethics and Greenwashing
Ethics can be defined as a set of moral standards, relied on to reach conclusions and decisions. Within a business environment, ethics play a large role in sophisticated decision making. Maintaining an ethical nature within a business can benefit both the internal and external stakeholders within the business.

Ethics are genuinely shaped as you mature and grow, and are significantly influenced by both your surrounding environment and the people around you. Your ethical viewpoints continue changing and evolving over time as a result of the different people you expose and interact with as well as the change of environment and situations you can find yourself in. Business ethics are genuinely based on the way in which positive benefits can be made to your business, with high ethical standards will lead to:
• Improved employee and organisational morale
• Increased ability to attract new customers
• Improved customer loyalty
• Reduced risk of negative exposure and public backlash caused by poor ethics
• Attraction of new stakeholders
• Making a positive impact on the community

Business ethics are important mainly because of the consequences that can occur from the decisions in which lack a regard to ethics. Good ethics may not always lead to high profit for a business, but poor ethical standards within a business can negatively effect on your business in the long term. The future effects of business manager’s actions could be severe, particularly if there is injury to staff or they are experiencing financial loss.

Through poor ethics, many businesses have come into legal cases where people seek compensation for how they have suffered as a result of the decisions of business people not following there ethical standards. In businesses, who share a common goal of being sustainable, it is important for employees at all level to be committed to its ethical standards within the business. As a business manager it is significantly important that you are able to



Bibliography: Samson, D & Daft, RL 2012, Management, 4th edn, Asia Pacific edn, Cengage Learning, Melbourne. Davis, J. (1992). Ethics and Environmental Marketing. Journal of Business Ethics, 11: pp. 81-87. (viewed 23/03/2013) TerraChoice Environmental Marketing. The Seven Sins of Greenwashing: Environmental Claims in Consumer Markets. London: TerraChoice Environmental Marketing; 2009. (viewed 22/03/2013) TerraChoice Environmental Marketing. The “Six Sins of Greenwashing”: A Study of Environmental Claims in North American Consumer Markets. London: TerraChoice Environmental Marketing; 2007. (viewed 22/03/2013) Advertising Standards Authority. ASA Adjudication on Malaysia Palm Oil Council. London: Advertising Standards Authority; Jan 9, 2008. (viewed 23/03/2013) B. Anderson, (2004) Bringing Business Ethics to Life. (viewed 24/03/2013) Jenner, EJ. (2005) Greenwashing: Visual communication and political influence in environmental policy. (viewed 22/03/2013)

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