Preview

Ethics and Greenwashing

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1440 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
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)

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    A green consumer is someone who invests their money into items that will not cause anymore damage to the environment in comparison to non-ecofriendly products, an example of this is someone buying an electric or hybrid car instead of one that runs off gasoline. Though, with green consumerism comes with greenwashing, which is uncommon but it still has its occurrences. Greenwashing is when businesses sell a product that is considered green or eco-friendly, but it truthfully is extremely hazardous towards the environment. Before the 2015 lawsuit on car emissions against Volkswagen, their cars were considered a better choice in automotive transportation because the emissions released into the atmosphere were said to contain less toxins, when in reality Volkswagen’s emissions were just as bad as any other diesel vehicle. Looking at corporations like Volkswagen, many people are able to see the effects of greenwashing and the fallacies that may hide behind green…

    • 1173 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Task 310.2.1-05

    • 675 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Business ethics can be defined as “written and unwritten codes of principles and values that govern decisions and actions within a company.” (Love to Know, n.d.) Behaving ethically is extremely important for businesses in order to cultivate an image of responsibility and grow a loyal customer base. Companies have a moral obligation to help the communities from which they profit to grow and prosper.…

    • 675 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    EST1 TASK2

    • 1014 Words
    • 4 Pages

    STANDARDS AND PROCEDURES The importance of ethics in business is highly valued as it helps to determine how the company is perceived by the society and others. All members of Company X are required to follow this section to help the company, employees and clients.…

    • 1014 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In a business setting moral ethics plays a small role because as a business, the responsibility involves many people. It could involve shareholders, managers, fellow employees and the…

    • 569 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Marketing & sustainability

    • 1346 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Kotler, P, Brown, L, Burton, S, Deans, K & Armstrong, G 2010, Marketing, 8th edn, Pearson Australia, Frenches Forest, NSW.…

    • 1346 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Consistently making business ethical decisions is a key to long-term success for any business. By setting the standard throughout your business of business ethical decisions, your helping your company obtain a stronger positive reputation in the business world. This in turn will help secure a loyal customer base.…

    • 476 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The False Promise of Green Consumerism By 20 Dec. 2013 Outline Thesis statement: Of course green consumerism helps the world greatly against pollution, degradation, destruction of natural resources and global warming, however the false promise of such consumerism will lead to their vast spreading, and increase in their affective power.…

    • 747 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Nowadays, consumers and pressure groups appear to be increasingly demanding firms to seek out more ethical and ecologically sound ways of doing business. The media also constantly seems to be keeping the spotlight on corporate abuses and malpractices. Even firms themselves appear to be increasingly recognizing that being ethical (or at the very least being seen to be ethical) may actually be good for business.…

    • 3015 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    AMRE

    • 2960 Words
    • 12 Pages

    Highly Highly Unethical Ethical Ethics is moral principles that govern a person 's behavior or the conducting of an activity. "Ethics in business" is the behavior that a business adheres to in its daily dealings with the world. The ethics of a particular business can be diverse. They apply not only to how the business interacts with the world at large, but also to their one-on-one dealings with a single customer.…

    • 2960 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The author wishes the reader a pleasant intellectual venture. Contents Introduction “Our product is green, 100% environmentally friendly and completely natural” (too many companies, 2014). That is a company worth investing in, you might think! Think again, the concept is greenwashing, its trade is deception and its tools are marketing and the people’s goodwill. The term greenwashing in this essay is used to describe a process where businesses pretend to be more socially responsible or green than they actually are. Companies must stop greenwashing and start actually transforming into a sustainable and responsible company. However companies could easily argue that businesses are there to make profits within the legal scope and they are doing just that, so the ball is kicked in the consumer’s court. But, consumers must be able to trust reliable data provision without being fooled. Arguments that support the thesis are that investment in sustainability will actually be rewarding to business and there is simply no future for greenwashing. However, it all starts with the businesses and their fuel: Money.…

    • 1309 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    green marketing in automobile

    • 28081 Words
    • 113 Pages

    Davis, J. (1992), “Ethics and green marketing”, Journal of Business ethics, Vol. 11 (2), pp.…

    • 28081 Words
    • 113 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Ethics

    • 937 Words
    • 4 Pages

    ROLE OF ETHICS IN BUSINESS: Ethics Defined: Ethics are principles based on doing the right thing. They are the moral values by which an individual or business operates. In theory, a business or individual can act ethically and still attain ultimate success. A history of doing the right thing can be used as a selling point to heighten a person's or organization's reputation in the community. Not only are ethics morally valued, they are backed by legal repercussions for failure to act within certain guidelines.…

    • 937 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Business Ethics

    • 7229 Words
    • 29 Pages

    Ethics is a branch of philosophy and is considered as normative science because it is concerned with norms of human beings. Business ethics has evolved through time and across disciplines into a discipline that is one of the most important topics in the field of business. business ethics from a managerial perspective can be defined as ‘decisions about what is right or wrong (acceptable or unacceptable) in the organizational context of planning and implementing business activities in a global business environment to benefit: organizational performance, individual achievement in the workplace, social acceptance and approval of peers and coworkers in the organization as well as responding…

    • 7229 Words
    • 29 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Importance of Ethics

    • 601 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Ethics in business world is a wide topic to explain, But the basic concept is:…

    • 601 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Institutionalizing Ethics

    • 802 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Institutionalizing Ethics Business ethics are increasingly addressed in seminars and at conferences. Managers, especially top managers do have a responsibility to create an organizational environment that fosters ethical decision making by institutionalizing ethics. This means applying and integrating ethical concepts with daily actions. This can be accomplished in three ways:…

    • 802 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays