ENTREPRENEURS SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY Entrepreneurs Social Responsibility and Ethical Decision Making



Entrepreneurs Social Responsibility and Ethical Decision Making

Entrepreneurs Social Responsibility

The entrepreneurs should be responsible towards business ethics. Corporate social responsibility includes taking the public interest into account when making decisions and integrating a basic concept of sustainability, the triple bottom line, into standard business practices. Corporate social responsibility includes acting in a sustainable manner. Ethics is a fundamental building block of corporate social responsibility. When employees act in an unethical manner, negative social impacts can result. Because of the importance of employee ethics, many businesses are integrating ethics training into their social responsibility efforts. This training prepares their employees to do the “right” thing, even when it is not required.

Corporate social responsibility requires some knowledge of the public's needs, interests, and desires. To better understand how to positively contribute to the local communities in which they operate, some entrepreneurs practice community-based development as a part of their corporate social responsibility programs. Community-based development gathers stakeholder feedback to guide the development of social programs to address local issues (Bartlett, 2008).

Sustainability focuses on accounting for the economic impacts of a business as well as the environmental and social impacts. Today, investors are increasingly demanding that businesses not only act in an ethical and sustainable manner but disclose their actions to the public in voluntary reports. These reports are called by many names, including corporate social responsibility reports, sustainability reports, citizenship reports, ecological footprint reports, environmental social governance reports, social reports, and triple bottom line reports. Many entrepreneurs today are producing these reports in an effort to be unceasingly transparent and accountable to the public (Hisrich, Peters & Shepherd, 2010).

Ethical Decision Making

Responsible decision making is vital in a complex world of business. The sensitivity of this is that leaders must lead by ethical dilemmas in business situations where usually they have to make tough decisions in an atmosphere of interests and conflicts. A cornerstone for entrepreneurs is their values and practices. This may sound like something very simple but it is not. When the organization faced with crossroads and must take a decision, sticking to the code of business ethics may facilitate the decision making. Moreover, showing consistency in ethical decision making fosters employee confidence, in the company, customers and suppliers.

Besides being very clear about the values of the company and the expected behavior, staff must know the mission and vision of the company to ...