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LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY

MITTAL SCHOOL OF BUSINESS LOVELY FACULTY OF BUSINESS AND ARTS

Name of the Faculty member :- Megha Singh

Course Code: MGN 253 Course Title: Business Ethics

Academic Task No: 1 Academic Task Title: CA 1

Date of Allotment: 17-08-22 Date of Submission: 31-08-22

Student Roll No:RQ2102A20 Student Reg. No: 12100258

Term: 1 Section: Q2102

Max. Marks: Marks. Obtained:

Learning Outcomes: (Student to write briefly about learnings obtained from the academic tasks)

Declaration:

I declare that this Assignment is my individual work. I have not copied it from any other students’ work or
from any other source except where due acknowledgement is made explicitly in the text, nor has any part
been written for me by any other person.

Student’ Signature: LHAWANG GYALJEN LAMA

Evaluator Remarks Marks obtained

What is business ethics?
Business ethics is a form of applied ethics or professional ethics, that examines ethical principles
and moral or ethical problems that can arise in a business environment. It applies to all aspects of
business conduct and is relevant to the conduct of individuals and entire organizations.

Why is business ethics important?

1. Ethics lays the strategic decision-making. Leaders and workers of a business characterized
by ethical behavior make decisions that are socially acceptable. They allow all the
stakeholders to participate in the decision-making process.

2. They increase employee retention. Employees always want to stay longer in a business
where the employers value their rights and opinions. To them, their basic needs are
satisfied.

3. An ethical business attracts investors. A business that promotes ethics in its management
and operations create an investment-friendly environment. Investors like putting their
money where they are sure it is safe.

4. Ethics minimizes costs. Fewer funds are spent in employee recruitment since most
employees are retained in the business.

5. Ethical practices help in building and maintaining reputation. A large part of ensuring
business success is down to maintaining a good reputation among your customers. One of
the main things that customers will scrutinize when they decide whether they trust or want
to engage with a business or not is that business’s ethics. If you can brand yourself
explicitly as an ethical business, so much the better!
 Introduction to the Assignment

A brief introduction on what you can expect in this assignment. So our team did a survey in lovely
professional university about business ethics. We asked different people about business ethics , its
benefits , how and why business ethics is important, what are some unethical things that businesses
should not do and what ethics should business adopt. We also asked did survey on unethical things
happened with these people. Also some locals enlightened us about some unethical things that are
happening in Punjab or local area like Phagwara and Jalandhar .

Out of the survey’s we were able to identify 2 major unethical things done by businesses. So we
will be identifying the unethical things , we will talk about the reasons that lead to those things and
we will also be writing down recommendations to stop these unethical things.

Survey 1:-
In the first survey we asked a MBA student about business ethics and she already knew about
what business ethics is and how it is important it is for businesses today to adopt ethics. She told
us about a racial discrimination that was once done by Coca Cola. In that incident we came to
know that coca cola once discriminated their employees on the basis of their colour. The
employees who were of darker shade were paid less , and were also treated badly compared to all
the other employees.

Unethical behaviour identified in survey 1:-

In survey one we identified that coca cola’s racist behaviour with their employees was very
unethical. It is unethical to discriminate employees on the basis of their colour , cast , ethnicity etc.
Factors leading to this kind of behaviour:-
1. Racism was at its very peak in those times when this incident took place. In the early 2000’s
white Americans and black Americans were two groups that used to fight a lot on colour
and race .
2. The work environment was not good. The majority of managers were white and they
discriminated the employees , considering employees of their colour better and of higher
status.
3. America at that time was at its peak of racism. Fights and riots were happening all the time
so this lead to discriminative mentality .

Recommendations :-
1. Mangers to create awareness about racism and how the people when working should not
discriminate or be racist.
2. Tackling systemic racism within the organization. Companies should be open to a total revamp
of the office culture to end the cycle of racism.
3. Educate the staff through racial bias training.

Survey 2:-

In this survey we talked to a local person who also works at lovely professional university. In
this discussion we came to know about a incident that took place in Phagwara. So the Sandhar
sugarcane mill in Phagwara had a deal with the farmers where they bought sugarcane from farmers
across Punjab and promised them to pay the amount after the sugarcane were sold in the market.
The mill owes approximately 300 crore rupees to farmers across Punjab. Out of the 300 crores the
mill owes 72 crore rupees to farmers from Phagwara itself. The owner of the Sandhar sugarcane
mill owner sold the sugarcane in the market and when it came to paying the farmers he ran fled
the country and is currently residing in Canada as per reports.
Unethical behaviour identified in this survey :-
In this survey we identified that sugarcane mill owner had a contract with the farmers according
to which he owed a certain amount to them but the owner decided to scam the farmers and do
fraud with them. It was very unethical of the owner to do this kind of fraud and run away with all
the money. These kind of scams affect the ethical business owners as well .

Factors leading to this incident :-

1 :- Arrogance – Some people believe that they are better than ‘the system’, and that they can
get away with anything. For eg :- The late Robert Maxwell plundered his company pension
scheme, arrogantly assuming that since he was chairman of the company he could get away with
it; he almost did.

2:- Corrupt legal system:- Law is same for rich and the poor but implementation is entirely
different. With the same set of rules, a poor farmer or shopkeeper will be forced relentlessly to
repay even rupees one hundred but same set of rules will allow Mallya’s, Modi’s etc to run away
with thousands of crores.

3:- Safe heavens like London for fraudsters :- It is a fact, that criminals and fraudsters
escape to London from all over the world. Indian fraudsters, are also not behind the race as nearly
130 of them escapes to London. Fraudster from India like Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi flew to
London after doing frauds worth of billions. Nirav Modi’s scam has inflated ₹14,356.84 crore
which is nearly US$2.1 billion.

Moreover, the British government welcomes these fraudsters and criminals. In fact, they also
provide them Golden Visa. However, the condition is they need to invest heavily in the UK
government. UK government gives Golden Visas to all these scamsters and fraudsters to attract
foreign capital to boost their economy. In return, these fraudsters get the right to residence and
citizenship.
 Recommendations:-

1:- Lack of ethical grounding in corporate governance is the reason behind scandals like these.
So education on business ethics and ethical grounding should be made compulsory.

2:- countries like England , Canada etc. which provide safe residence to fraudsters should do
something about it and help in catching these fraudsters rather than helping them.

3:- Indian government should approach these countries and come to a common solution after which
these fraudsters will be easy to catch. And the people thinking of doing fraud will at least think
twice before committing the crime.

CONCLUSION

After doing the survey's and doing our research we have figured out that not many people
know about business ethics.

Other than that we came to know about 2 important unethical behaviors that needed to be
talked about and taken action on

Also we did our best to educate people about business ethics and asked to dig deeper into this
as it is a very important part of our life

THANK YOU