Target Corporation - Business Ethics

Introduction

Business conducting business ethically, complying with integrity to regulatory issues, is increasingly critical to succeed within the global business environment. “Conformance with local law and practices does not guarantee stakeholder or public approval of a corporation’s behavior” (Paine, Deshpande, & Margolis, 2011, para 3). The ethical and compliance programs of businesses often fall short of addressing global business ethical responsibilities. For these companies falling short of addressing these ethical responsibilities, it is important for businesses to manage conduct and ethics to optimize business sustainability. This data used for implementing best practices in corporate culture and social responsibility will affect global brand development.

Compliance and Ethics:

A compliance program is the internal procedures and policies of a business to comply with rules and regulations to uphold the company’s reputation (Staff, 2018). An ethics program communicates the business philosophy of the company to investors, employees, vendors, and customers (Leviticus, 2017). The compliance and ethics programs of most companies today fall short of addressing multinationals' basic responsibilities such as developing their people or delivering high-quality products, let alone vexing issues on how to stay competitive in markets where rivals follow different rules (Paine, Deshpande, Margolis, 2011). Incidents have shown that conformance with local law and practice do not guarantee stakeholder or public approval of a corporation's behavior (Paine, Deshpande, Margolis, 2011). This does not mean that companies should automatically default to their home-country practices.

An extensive global survey conducted by the Harvard Business Review (HBR) conducted on “more than 6,200 employees from the top ranks to the front lines of four leading multinationals based in the U.S., Europe, and Japan, say there is a strong consensus on the basic standards of conduct that companies should follow worldwide” (Paine, Deshpande, Margolis, 2011, para 4). This Harvard Business Review (HBR) survey found that employees agree on core standards and see room for multinationals to continuously improve their behavior. Instead of intensifying focus on compliance, companies must bring to management of business conduct the same performance tools and concepts that they use to manage quality, innovation, and financial results. Each company has different conduct gaps, but this survey determined three commonalities as to why programs fall short of addressing global business ethical responsibilities: the altitude effect, basics matter, and employees are an early-alert system (Paine, Deshpande, & Margolis, 2011). The altitude effect refers to upper management having an inaccurately positive view of the company’s conduct, indicating leadership is out of touch and less informed (Paine, Deshpande, & Margolis, 2011). Basics matter refers to the “gaps for standards of business integrity” being “among the widest”, reminding business leaders to “remain vigilant about basic business integrity even as they strive to meet emerging standards of corporate citizenship concerning the environment, human rights, and supplier practices” (Paine, Deshpande, & Margolis, 2011, para 12). Early-alert system refers to the gaps related from the lack of concern for employees’, such as responsiveness to employee’s concerns and fair compensation goals (Paine, Deshpande, & Margolis, 2011).

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