Is Doing Business compatible with Doing good

Ah yes! The eternal question. We can put this question another way - Are business owners ethical? Are business owners moral?

Some people will argue that you can't do good business and still be good! According to them you will never make any money if you run your business morally. My argument is that if you don't run your business morally sooner or later you won't have a business because no one will want to work for you or do business with you.

My critics, I'm sure, will follow up with the statement, "by that time I would have already made all the money I want to make, so who cares".

Very true - so how do you guide young and upcoming businessmen who are in competition with very powerful immoral incumbents.

Take for example, we know of the companies that only get involved in helping develop entrepreneurs so that they can buy them out in a few years; or what about the companies that go directly to your supplier and negotiate a deal "behind your back" and then one morning you realize you are no longer the distributor of said product!

This is just one of the challenges that many face in a country where morals and ethics do NOT play a part in the business world.

But let's extend this thought to how these unethical companies treat their employees. As I said earlier, if one day people decided that they've had enough of being treated like a slave and leave, where would our lovely companies be? But we already know that not everyone will leave; we already know that even though everyone gets upset and complains about the way they are treated by their employers, the conditions of their workplace, the below worth salary when compared with the amount of work that is required of them; we know that at the end of the day a job is a job is a job.

Without that "horrible" job you probably will not survive.

So the power remains with companies to actually step up and be better people, be better employers. I say that the responsibility lies with the employers to ensure that they don't get so greedy that they forget the people who work for them. I have seen how greed has turned otherwise good, honest and dare I say Christian employers to literally act like the Devil Incarnate when it comes to business.

It is a sad reality that we live in when the "leaders" of organizations perpetuate such conditions in our society.