Countries where the business environment is ethical have a higher degree of trust and are more predictable, therefore, business is less risky. Investors, employers, and employees spend less time and energy on protecting themselves from these environmental risks, and more on their primary task of meeting and beating the competition by producing products and providing high quality services to their customers.
The costs of unethical behavior are hard to measure, but in many developing countries they can add more than 20% to the cost of doing business in the country. As any business manager will tell you, 20% is a very good profit margin, but if it is wasted on environmental risks of unethical behavior, then such businesses are at a disadvantage against their competitors in other countries. As a result, in order to be competitive, companies in a bad environment have to produce for less, which usually means lower wages and cheaper, less innovative products (Humphreys, Moak, Reudenbach, Robin, 1993).
Unethical behavior thus leads to low wages, unemployment and poverty. Just as individual customers do not want to do business with a store that cheats and once a store has this reputation, it loses its clientele, so too with countries. If they have the reputation of being unethical or corrupt, then, even if they have other attractive qualities, investors do not want to invest there and business people avoid establishing business there. For this reason, ethics is not just a personal or individual concern, nor is it merely of concern for managers or government officials. It is a systemic concern for everyone who wants to live in a prosperous and fair country. In short, the rules of regular market discipline lead us to the conclusion that Good ethics is good business (Cullen, Stephens, Victor, 1989).
What characteristics reveal Christ......
