(Summary of The Kingdom Summit 2015 session by Soji Apampa)
WHAT IS ETHICS IN BUSINESS? People define ‘ethics’ as ‘a set of morals and principles’. But essentially what actually controls our behavior in business is our ethics. So if our choices in business are consistently bad then it means our ethics must be bad. If our choices in business are acceptable or good then it is coming from a place of good ethics. ARE ETHICS ABSOLUTE OR RELATIVE? If we think about it carefully, people tend to set standards for themselves in relation to their constraints and challenges. After all they want to achieve their standards. But because of our environment and our resources, if the standards are set too low then our ethics will be too low and they might not be acceptable. For example: Doctors take the Hippocratic oath. This is for doctors all over the world to subscribe to the same standard of behavior and that is what defines the minimum acceptable standard. You may notice that I said – minimum acceptable. This is because of the relativity of standards. Let me make this very concrete for you with three examples. EXAMPLES- A particular telephone network in Nigeria gave SIM cards, air time and some other things to all the law makers in Nigeria. It wasn’t very much of an issue. In fact I doubt that anybody here even remembers that such a thing took place.
- In South Africa, I believe some lawmakers managed to buy some Mercedes Benz jeeps at a considerable discount. They actually went to jail in the end. They went to jail not for stealing the Mercedes Benz jeeps, but because they actually got it for a substantial discount that nobody else in the society would have had access to.
- There was a minister in Sweden who on getting to a super market used the credit card that was issued by the Government to pay for her groceries because she left hers behind in the office. She got back to office and issued a cheque to pay back instantly. She was dismissed for abuse of public funds.
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