How To Incorporate Business Ethics Without Sacrificing Bottom Line Profits
Most people certainly do not enjoy receiving bills in the mail, especially when such invoices are accompanied by harsh and indifferent sounding legalese that sometimes does not even sound as if it was written by a human being. It is no secret that large banks and corporations earn much of their money via the morally questionable use of hidden terms and fees in the fine print that require reading glasses to see, and many such companies do not conduct themselves by a high code of moral ethics. After all, why be nice when you can be rich?
Typically many people who work for such companies that implement such questionable behavior are not actually bad people; it is not like they wake up in the mornings excited about how many people they will be able to hurt. It is a simple fact that such practices are profitable, and the fact that they are mean and nasty does not detract from this fact. However, giving a backwards justification for selfish behavior and exploiting unknowing and sometimes vulnerable people is no way to conduct business in the world today. There is no reason why morality and profitability cannot coexist together, and in fact some of the richest people are also some of the nicest.
Examples Of Unethical Business Behavior
Many people take advantage of the concept of the corporate veil where the corporation itself exists as a separate entity, and they will use this as a way to justify immoral behavior. Many of us have been the witnesses and victims of such behavior, and you are bound to encounter people practicing such usurious behavior that have no qualms or scruples against exploiting and taking advantage of other people for the sake of dollars.
One of the most widely practiced forms of unethical business is creating contracts that are binding and restricting, so that once a person gets roped into the contract they are unable to break it even if it is a great strain on them and they cannot afford to pay it. Such things are common when lending corporations of shady intent extend large amounts of credit to young people that may be in college and have only recently graduated high school. These companies will take advantage of the lack of financial education of such people, and usually slap them with restricting terms, hidden fees, and high interest rates on money borrowed.
Granted, while contracts and even binding contracts can and do play an essential role in conducting business, there is no need to take this idea to the max by creating a document that, once a person has placed their signature on it, they are trapped in a form of debt servitude where they literally become employees for another person’s money.
In a popular business model such as rental real estate, contracts between landlords and tenants are important for making this type of business arrangement work, both for keeping the rates low for a tenant and limiting potential risk that the owner might face from property destruction. Lease agreements are popularly used for this sort of business, and while this type of contract is binding for a period of time there is no need for it to be excessively binding or limiting for any party involved.
Another example of an unethical business model is called forced continuity marketing, and this is the practice of signing people up for a recurring bill once you have their financial information and they will need to contact you to cancel a service that they never signed up for in the first place. This can happen with internet businesses, where you pay $10 for a certain online product and then you see a $30 recurring charge on next month’s statement that will continue until you contact them to cancel, even though there was no information about any additional charges.
Fostering Ethical And Moral Business Practices
One of the best ways to integrate ethics into your business is not to use contracts that are binding. You should be very democratic and egalitarian in your business dealings, so that once a person wants to leave there is nothing that needs to stop them. Instead of relying on a cheap excuse to keep your business going, the burden is now on you to provide enough value for your customers that they will want to stay with you by choice and not because you can threaten them with legal action if they leave.
One of the basic principles of sound and ethical business is about creating value for people, and creating more value than the amount of money that you are asking in return. Instead of creating a membership-based website that provides little real value and costs $50 per month, create a website that provides $10,000 worth of value for your customers that costs the same. Creating value for other people is not just important for creating wealth, but also if you want to stand out in the vast crowd of competitors you will need to have material that is at the cutting edge in terms of the information that it provides to your target market.
About the author
Nathan Navachi is a professional writer, blogger, internet marketer and forex trader who lives in Ohio. He is the writer and webmaster for http://TheCurrencyMarkets.com which contains a wealth of information about making money with forex trading and how to live a rich life.Tags: binding contracts, Business Ethics, corporate veil, morality in business