The Importance Of Morality In Business

Morality is defined as the values that distinguishes between good and bad or right and wrong actions (Morality). It is an essential value to have since it plays an important role in shaping a person’s behaviour as well as actions that causes further external consequences uncontrollable by individuals’ ability (BLOCK, Greg). Especially in business decisions where one small judgement may create a chain effect, inducing a series of events one after another. This will affect countless stakeholder groups, causing consequences on an unimaginable scale at times. Be it for legal reasons, ethical considerations or personal reputation, business decisions should not completely disregard morality. A primary consideration is that morality and the rule

Particularly, there has been a rising importance of corporate social responsibility as the public expects more from firms to care for its stakeholders. Although immoral business decisions may sometimes be most cost-efficient and profitable, stakeholders like the consumers may be repulsed by its unethical conduct since the consumers’ interest may be conflicted. For instance, consumers may seek animal cruelty-free products whereas businesses may utilize animal testing methods for reasons such as self-protection when the company is charged by injured customers (Why do companies continue to test products on animals?). An example would be cosmetic companies that are still conducting animal testing such as Revlon. Although Revlon announced that they do not have animal testing practises, but the fact remains that Revlon is still keeping their “required by law animal testing stance” (COMBS, Tashina, 2014), a clear self-contradiction which may negatively affect their corporate image. Since business image is interconnected with its credibility, hence if a firm is perceived negatively by its stakeholders, a destructive chain effect leading from bad corporate reputation to lower sales may potentially put a business into slumps. Similar to how a positive corporate reputation may encourages employees to work harder, a bad business image can demotivate its workforce thus lowering efficiency and profit