Ethical Conduct for a Socially Responsible Company
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and the concept of ethical trading make good business sense providing insurance through risk management, increasing the likelihood of investment, employee, and customer loyalty, and helps establish a companies reputation. Although some corporate social and environmental policies are not worth the recycled paper they are written on there are many companies taking these issues seriously. And so they should given that the turnover of some international corporations is greater than the national economy of many countries.
It a critical part of our lives and work to encourage and stimulate good practices. We want to increase consumer and business awareness of environmental and human rights, to facilitate understanding of sustainable development and inform ethical buyers about companies making efforts to address these important issues.
A code of conduct lays out your company's commitment to its behaviour and that of its suppliers in relation to human rights, the environment, community and other stakeholders. It is a voluntary statement of your values and ethics reflecting your vision and how you believe your company should act in the world at large.
There are many examples of codes of conduct floating about - some good and some bad, what is fundamental to a code of conduct is that it represents something you can live by - otherwise on both a moral and legal level you could be in trouble. Be sure you consider all aspects of creating a code from your market to the legal and strategic implications. Your credibility will be reflected in this code, what it says, how it is implemented and monitored.
Large organisations may also find that they need one overall code and then separate codes for individual departments or country groups. As with all strategy the code needs to be accepted and desired by all decision makers in your company and all employees need to feel they have had some input in to the process.
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