THE IMPORTANCE OF ETHICS AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITIES TO A BUSINESS ORGANISATION

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the study

Ethics and social responsibilities of a business and their organization has been extremely important to every society and Nigeria at large. Every society makes sure that those who engage in any form of business should engage in good morals in their daily activities. Ethics and social responsibilities are related concepts that pay special attention on moral conscience of business. The idea of ethical responsibilities has to do with those issues and problems that concerns people in business, and their faithfulness to their organization and to their customers also. Social responsibilities and its problem is the interest and need of every society.  There are laid down rules that govern every profession. In enabling us understand what “ethics” actually means, we shall quickly look at the following phenomena that could rapidly be misconceived as ethics. We are referring to such phenomena as law and morality: Laws are laid down rules made by administrations, communities, governments etc. And the motives of these laws are primarily to regulate or check discrepancies or misconduct as may be observed in human character or behavior. Summarily; laws improves human character, which when absent could bring about disorderliness and chaos. Morality on the other hand is related to the opinion principle of good and evil as it affect human conduct. It comes from the mind to differentiate good from evil. We can in other words refer to morals as love and ethical virtues. Finally morals involves individual character considered by the winning standard of moral honesty. Ethics has been defined as the principle of right and wrong conduct by the American heritage dictionary (second college edition). It is also the general study of the entire nature of morals and the specific moral choices made by a person as it affect his relationship with his fellow individuals. Those used in an organization in achieving it’s objectives, makes up the workforce of that organization and also of competence of any organizational objectives. A very high level of performance and efficiency has to be attained by the staff as a workforce: Efficiency is a function of so many different factors like, political, social, societal and economical, just to mention but a few. The staff is an essential factor of production in any given establishment since their proficiency and contributions can either promote or demote the efficiency of an establishment. In the eyes of an ordinary person, a staff could be considered as a group of individual or persons that operate in an establishment in order to achieve a common purpose. They also indulge in accounting, managerial and clerical functions. A good staff is one that uses his intellect and positive opinions to make suitable decision not beyond the scope of approved governance without having to be monitored and also with a reasonable degree of moral standards. Members of every professions are being guided by some codes of conducts; such professions include, Lawyers, Doctors, Customs, etc. There are some ethical conducts that are written down on paper, whereas others are verbal or unwritten. The said rules are made known to the members of a particular profession. To be ethical means, keeping these rules in your relationship with your fellow staff whereas, to be in ethical means not abiding by these rules. Social and ethical obligations are concepts that concentrate o the conscience of business managers as an image-maker of an establishment with the outside world. This is normally achieved by the reasonable use of telephones, faxes, letters, etc. To an extent, this encourages positive public reaction towards the organization depending on the moral character of the staff. It is therefore of interest that since the staff engage in various forms of business administration ranging from agriculture to production and manufacturing, they should be socially and morally obligated to the community where they operate so as to excel in their operations.