Entrepreneur's Handbook
ETHICAL BASIS AND THE ETHICAL PRINCIPLES OF THE VENTURE
The people who make up the society need moral values, though not written, in order to increase the predictability of their relationships while living together. Similarly, in the business world, there is a need to look at the values of business ethics that form the basis for judgments such as right-wrong, good-bad, defensible-untenable, honorable-dishonorable. In this context, it is possible to say that the ethical principles of the enterprise constitute the moral values of the society in each society.
Initiatives that ignore or ignore these values may be able to gain, grow and survive in the short term. But it should not be forgotten that when it is recognized that the contradiction or lack of these values is somehow manifested by the actions and consequences of the initiatives, it is not possible for any enterprise that lacks ethical principles or continues to behave against them. As a matter of fact, many examples of this in the business world can be found among the history pages.
In terms of new and small enterprises, it can be said that the entrepreneur's ethical intelligence should be supported with the values of honesty, responsibility, compassion and forgiveness (Lennick and Kiel, 2005: 190-196). Especially in small enterprises where business owners and managers and employees can communicate more easily, these values are observed to be reflected in the results much faster. The consequences of acting contrary to these values, on the one hand, cause unrest within the business, on the other hand, cause a reaction against entrepreneurs in the customers, competitors and society in general.
Entrepreneurs' lack of ethical principles or acting against them is of course voluntary. It is necessary to consider some situations that are overlooked by the entrepreneur and can be considered as incidental. For example, the emergence of extraordinary examples that are against ethical principles due to an employee's ambition to earn more, desire to work less, disregard and similar situations can be accepted as exceptions, even if the entrepreneur does not want to do so. If an enterprise essentially cares about the moral values of society, having an ethical basis in essence, it would be appropriate to consider such incidental situations as an exception.
In order to understand the ethical foundations of the enterprise more clearly, it would be appropriate to list the ethical principles of the entrepreneur. We can list the entrepreneur's ethical principles as reliability, honesty, sense of responsibility, fairness and efficient use of resources.
3.1. Reliability
One of the most important ethical principles of the entrepreneur is his reliability. Throughout history, numerous examples are mentioned regarding the trustworthiness of our tradesmen and traders, that is, their reliability. Indeed, evaluating an entrepreneur as a reliable person is highly valued by their employees, customers, suppliers and competitors. Reliability makes the entrepreneur predictable. Being predictable builds trust in the entrepreneur's relationships. Predictability is not a feature that limits an entrepreneur's capacity to innovate, to develop new things.
Delivering the promised product to the customer on the promised day increases the trust in the entrepreneur, while it does not mean that the entrepreneur will not do anything new for the processes, functions, benefits or presentation style of the product with the comfort of trust. On the contrary, a reliable entrepreneur, with these features, also satisfies his customers, employees and suppliers and whips his competitors while providing additional satisfaction. In other words, an entrepreneur who behaves in this way, while standing out with his reliability on the one hand, on the other hand, by surprising his competitors, encourages them to strive towards doing better.
3.2. Honesty
Just as no excuse is to excuse being dishonest in daily life, it is not welcome for the entrepreneur to justify dishonest behavior. Even the natural or legal monopoly of an entrepreneur in his own market cannot be a reason to compromise on honesty. Ultimately, an entrepreneur may be forced into a monopoly position as a reason for his dishonest behavior and actions, but this will only increase the hatred towards the entrepreneur. Similarly, the fact that it has a buyer monopoly, is strong in terms of employment, that is, employees and / or suppliers do not have an alternative to work in a short time does not eliminate the hatred to the dishonest entrepreneur.
The important thing is that the entrepreneur can act in accordance with the principle of honesty despite his certain power. Sometimes, instead of strength, there may be tendencies to move away from honesty brought about by weakness in the market. In cases caused by weakness, the entrepreneur is expected to never give up the principle of honesty. For example, the attempt to defame the strong competitors in order to compete with the strong, cheating their own production in order to compete, and engaging in actions that will lead to unfair competition through brand, packaging, advertising and similar means without any entrepreneurial effort also means a departure from honesty for the entrepreneur.
3.3. Responsibility Awareness
As stated in the section on individual and social responsibilities, every entrepreneur has an individual, social and exemplary responsibility. Entrepreneurs who forget, ignore or ignore these responsibilities have serious responsibilities in terms of their actions and behavior and the costs that their consequences will impose on the economy and society. Therefore, every entrepreneur has to act with his own sense of responsibility.
On the other hand, it is a fact that entrepreneurs have a narrower responsibility towards their employees, customers, suppliers, competitors and the environment. Responsibilities such as paying taxes, making the payments of employees and suppliers on time, not polluting the soil, air and water resources, fulfilling their commitments to customers on time and in accordance with the provisions of the contract, and not being unfair to competitors are within this scope.
Finally, the entrepreneur also has family responsibilities. Ensuring the family's livelihood, sparing time for family members, and fulfilling kinship and neighborhood responsibilities are among the responsibilities of the entrepreneur.
On the other hand, the responsibilities of entrepreneurs, both to innovate as entrepreneurs and to contribute to economic development, and to apprenticeship and craftsmanship related to the craft or art related jobs can be counted among their often forgotten responsibilities.
3.4. To be fair
In fact, the responsibility to be fair emerges as a very important cross-section of the above-mentioned ethical principles. On the one hand, the entrepreneur who has the responsibility to produce a satisfactory good or service to his customer, on the other hand, has the responsibility to pay the supplier and employee for his labor on time. Similarly, it has the responsibility to grow earnings, create new jobs and develop innovations, as well as tax.
The responsibility to be fair may also require an entrepreneur not to pay mathematically equal pay amongst their employees. Similarly, applying different discounts among customers may also appear as a requirement of the responsibility of being fair.
In summary, the ethical principle of an entrepreneur's responsibility to be fair does not refer to equality in mathematical terms, but to the principle of giving the rightful person what he deserves. Otherwise, it will not be possible to validate the real competition and the motivation to innovate in the business world.
3.5. Using Resources Effectively
Resources can be equal on a world scale. Human experience clearly shows us that the distribution of resources is not fairly distributed around the world, and again, many human and initiative actions negatively affect this distribution. At this point, the principle of effective use of resources, which we think is very important among the ethical principles of the entrepreneur, appears.
Effective use of resources becomes even more important by considering not only the region and the country, but also the whole world. At this point, the entrepreneur should also be very sensitive and avoid waste when using resources. In this sense, in addition to raw materials, products and semi-finished products with all kinds of input characteristics, especially soil, air, water and energy, human resources and time should be counted among the resources that should be used effectively as an important enterprise resource.
In this context, the entrepreneur should use his own time as well as the time of his employees, customers and suppliers. It should see all kinds of raw materials as a very important resource that others and its competitors will need. It should never be in the understanding that I am paying the money, I can use it as I want it.