Business Ethics Persuasive

Describe the social implications of business ethics facing a selected business in its different areas of activity. The organisation BP
BP is a British public limited company which provides gas and oil. It is stated that it is the third largest energy company and the fourth largest company in the world itself. The business provides oil, gas and renewable energy resources to business such as petrol stations like SHELL. The company states that their main activities are the exploration and production of crude oil and natural gas, refining, marketing, supply, transportation, manufacturing and marketing of petrochemicals. BP also has growing activity in gas and power and in solar power generation and also has about 80,300 employees with a turnover of $297bn and operates in 100 countries on six continents. http://www.icis.com/v2/companies/9145150/bp/structure.html.

The strategy of the company is to focus relentlessly on safety and centres on playing to BP’s strengths which are: exploration, giant fields, deep water, gas value chains, a world – class downstream, technology and relationships. They aim to be successful providing outstanding performance, and known to be “one of the largest integrated energy companies in the world, BP is looking beyond traditional energy choices and are taking the next step into a brighter, cleaner tomorrow. BP is known as one of the largest energy organisations worldwide, and is also known to be in the heart of the climate change debate. BP has been centre stage for their environmental and social presentations from other organisations. I think that this is a strong reaction to the growing compression on energy companies to have more accountable business activities within their organisation. BP are trying to help the climate changing by using different types of energy efficiency by widening reductions and inferior carbon products, through biodiversity, water usages, waste and air releases.

The business BP itself has made a huge impact on the way the climate has changed by using emissions for the use of their products and using their own operations run by greenhouse gases. One of BP’s target was to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions from their operations in which they have succeed by cutting down by 10%. By doing so they increased their working efficiency, technical novelty and enhanced energy administration, as well as acquisition reductions in emissions by decreasing flaring.

The business has taken actions to address internal and external problems. Firstly they betrothed in activities that measure the climate change impact of using their products; they also tried to make their products cleaner. Currently the business is working on developing a fuel that reduces pollution by reducing carbon monoxide emissions. Also reducing oil with gas and creating hydrogen fuel cells. BP believe that by taking these actions it will help with climate changing by generating less pollution in the environment and improved sources of energy being used.

The benefits of challenging climate change:
* Reduced costs from developed energy efficiency
* New production development and innovation
* Customer needs are listened and responded to
* BP has risked their reputation due to the climate change By attempting to change the situation of climate change the business must look into long term sustainability.

Ethical BP Activities
* BP was awarded for the “best impression of an environmentalist” by Greenpeace. * BP causing climate change is not from their own operations but from the oil and gas it produces and sells to other businesses. Its aim was to reduce gas emissions from its operations by 10% from 1990 to 2010. * BP has also attempted to persuade politicians to help tackle the global warming situation. * As well as promising to cut down its own emissions of the pollution they cause they are also starting to sell cleaner petrol, as well as fitting 200 service stations with solar panels. * BP is currently known as the largest manufacturers of solar photovoltaic cells.

Non- ethical BP Activities
* BP has rebranded their image to show their customers that they are now an “environmentally responsibility” but to many people this is known as “green wash” because they are trying to look as if they are environmentally friendly even if they are not. * The business has spent a lot more money on rebranding their image instead of spending money on solar energy which is what their new image is all supposed to be about. * By rebranding the business to green wash people it is misleading the business shareholders as well as their customers and public.

Ethics in Finance
Ethics in Finance is made by news stories of main scandals such as corruption, executive pay, insider trading and lobbying.

Corruption is basically an act of bribery, by suggesting money or a gift to change the behaviour of the receiver. It is a serious crime and is the offering of an item of the value for the actions of a person in charge of something to change their decisions. An example of bribery would be a previous case where a mayor of a city was paid $325,000 less than the market value for a property causing suspiciousness of fraud and bribery, he was cleared but there was not efficient evidence of corruption. Another example would be a driver ticketed for parking in the wrong place may offer a bribe to the police officer to ask him or her to tear up the ticket.

An example of Executive pay is when a finance director of the Royal Bank of Scotland had left with a pay out of over £1million which includes over £280,000 pension allowance and a further £368,000 from investments into shares when he left Citigroup to join RBS. This caused a lot of trouble for the public as well as the media because the income he receives is paid by tax payers which he does not deserve because he caused the RBS to fall into the credit crunch and is now being accused of fraud and a breach of trust.

Ethics in Human Resource Management
Ethics in Human Resource Management involves discrimination and employee observation. Examples of discrimination cases involve when a retailer such as BOOTS are known for employing good lucking blonde hair girls in their store, this was for them to show a way of glamorous employees working for them showing examples of their products but this is known as discrimination because if it is unfair for people who have not got blonde hair. The retailer has now started to hire any gender, race and any type of person into their business.

Ethics in production
Ethics in production involves animal testing, genetically modified food and cases of businesses promoting alcohol to youngsters. Many businesses such as The Body Shop do not use animal testing on their products meaning it makes them niche and a caring organisation, because they use natural ingredients and do not harm animals.

Below the graph shows the types of animals that are used to test products. In my opinion I am against animal testing. I believe it is wrong as it causes harm, and are not being treated the way they should be only because they are animals and many people have mice for pets. All animals whether small or big should be looked after and not trapped in small cages and have products tested on them.

http://www.google.co.uk/imgresq=national+statistics+on+animal+testing+pie+chart&hl=en&tbo=d&biw=1024&bih=499&tbm=isch&tbnid=99_nrobACnedxM:&imgrefurl=http://www.nuffieldbioethics.org/animal-research/animal-research-what-animals-are-used-research&docid=iTz03NAS7bFBQM&imgurl=http://www.nuffieldbioethics.org/sites/default/files/images/pie%252520chart.jpg&w=479&h=350&ei=xpX-ULGaDqea0QWYoYDoDA&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=4&vpy=194&dur=691&hovh=192&hovw=263&tx=133&ty=170&sig=111013829742070698185&page=1&tbnh=139&tbnw=190&start=0&ndsp=16&ved=1t:429,r:5,s:0,i:94

Heritably adapted foods are a word used in relation to crop plants that are produced for human or animal ingesting by using the modern molecular ecology methods. Plants are modified in laboratories to improve wanted qualities such as increased confrontation to herbicides or developed nutritional content. In my opinion there are much strength about using generally modified foods as plants that haven’t been treated on mostly carry such diseases such as viruses, fungi and bacteria.

Ethics in Sales and Marketing
Ethics in sales and marketing involve spamming, product placement and green washing. In ethics spam is basically abusing the electronic messaging system
– EMAIL. These are normally from people who you do not know or want emails from. I do not agree with spam mail because even though businesses are trying to make sales they are sending unwanted junk mail which can start to get annoying especially when you receive it constantly.

Product placement is also another way of advertisement, where a branded good or service is placed in a way which normally ads, such as a story line of a television show or a movie. A product is not normally revealed at the time that the good or service is contained. I personally believe that is not good when someone is watching a movie at cinemas and images of food or other types of advertisement on the movie to persuade you to purchase one. It also is hard to realise that they have seen the advertisement because it has been shown so fast. It triggers the brain as it is a way of marketing.

Green wash is a word that is used when describing companies who claim their products are environmentally friendly such as NESTLE. They show they are cutting costs, and reducing wastes, to gain more consumers but really they may not be doing all this.

Ethics in Intellectual property
Ethics in Intellectual property is about software privacy, counterfeiting and peer to peer file sharing. Copyright infringement of software is in relation to practices that involve the unauthorized copying of computer programmes. I believe that it is not right to steal other individual’s information, pictures or work and hand it out claiming it is theirs, this involves people on social networking sites such as www.facebook.com people save other peoples pictures and make fake profiles claiming to be that person.

Counterfeiting is a product like Gucci bags are made of, and sold to consumers who believe that they are real products of Gucci when in reality they are only copies at cheap prices to make people believe they are the real things and they are only getting them cheaper. This is really bad in my opinion because designer brands such as D & G are created and sold at local markets for cheap prices for consumers to believe that they are real.