Business Ethics on the Web

Introduction

Since starting last year (2006) to expand our business on the internet I have joined many thousands of other people before me and since in becoming concerned about the low standards of business conduct faced day after day. Having, in my mainstream career, spent more than fifteen years as an adviser on corporate and public sector business ethics I decided that it might be helpful to post on this site a series of short articles highlighting some of the issues.

One option was to focus these on specific types of business misconduct. I felt that this approach would inevitably become too negative in tone, so instead decided to start with some positive principles.

Below is a diagram that I have been using for a long time in other connections. This 2006 version is the third to have emerged out of continuing experience since its first development in 1994.

These words may, at first sight, appear strange (indeed, very strange) in the context of internet-based business or, for that matter, any kind of business. I hope to show that they are all highly relevant. They have been powerful stimulants to thought in contexts as different as micro-business in Africa and public administration in eastern Europe, not to mention mainstream business from Australia to the UK. It has been my privilege over the past decade and a half to travel to many parts of the world lecturing and advising on these and related themes. Along the way I have concluded that there are some essential and universal principles for the growth of long-lasting business in whatever sector and with whatever technology. Not least is the requirement for customer and other relationships based on trust and confidence ..... which brings us to the subject of "Truth".

Click the "Truth" box on the diagram to go to a short article on this topic.

A series of ten short articles, expanding on the notes in this series on the web site and relating these principles to business on the web, is now in preparation. The series will consist of an introductory overview and one on each of the eight principles, plus a closing summary. The articles will be placed on this site in the near future, probably after the major relaunch due in late-2008.

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