Business Ethics and Corporate Governance, Second Edition

VALUES, ETHICS AND BUSINESS STRATEGY

Personal values and ethics are important for all human beings. They are especially important for business managers as they are custodians of the immense economic power vested in business organizations by society. However, can managers prevent their personal values from affecting business strategy formulation and implementation? This is a tricky question.

It is often observed from failed corporations that management executives while working out their business strategy are guided generally by what they personally want to do, rather than what they have been directed to do by the board, or the company policy in the absence of any direct supervision. As a result, somewhere down the line, the right connection between ...