Businesses cautioned against unethical conduct
Innocent Selatlhwa | Thursday June 23, 2016 15:23
Rossouw was speaking at a Botswana Business Ethics Forum (BBEF) breakfast seminar yesterday. BBEF, a partnership between Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime (DCEC) and University of Botswana (UB), will in future give direction on business practices.
Rossouw gave examples of global businesses that lost value and those which closed shop due to unethical practices.
“Volkswagen lost 1/3 of its value to ethical issues, Enrol had to shut down, Siemens scandal saw them lose billions and just in South Africa MTN is being punished by the Nigerian government for not registering simcards,” he said.
He said unethical practices have a negative impact on staff, as they may be demoralised especially when it is done from the top, adding that companies with high staff morale tend to produce stronger results.
The professor further shared with the business people, the bodies of legislation promoting ethical behaviour in South Africa, which include the new companies Act of 2011.
“It is required for every company to have a social and ethics committee which ensures that the company practices are ethical and comes up with regulations to cultivate the ethics culture,” he said.
Rossouw further said ethics must be part of the mainstream of businesses and called on the leaders especially chief executive officers to be ‘chief ethics officers’ to yield the desired results. He said it is time businesses link ethics with their operations to achieve success and sustainability.
For his part, Business Botswana chief executive officer Racious Moatshe said they as the business society were happy with the establishment of BBEF. “This is a very important forum.
We have had cases of people in executive leadership positions lose their positions due to fraud and other corrupt practices.
Promoting and educating on ethics will help shape a conducive environment for doing business,” he said.
Moatshe added that this will encourage those who have been fearing corruption in Africa to be interested in doing business in the continent. Rossouw had stated that over 70% of investors would not do business in Africa because of corruption.