Distibution Strategies Habib Jewel

Many businesses feel that practising good business ethics is costly and unnecessary to become a profitable operation. The practice of business ethics is not cost nor is it a disadvantages waste of time. On the contrary, business ethics is good for business and is essential for the good reputation of a country. Business ethics also create an environment based on trust and make economic transaction predictable for producers and consumers.

Business ethics can be define as the study of proper business policies and practices regarding potentially controversial issues, such as corporate governance, insider trading, bribery, discrimination, corporate social responsibility and fiduciary responsibilities. Business ethics are often guided by law, while other times provide basic framework that businesses may choose to follow in order to gain public acceptance. Basically, business ethics are implemented in order to ensure that a certain required level of trust exist between consumers and various forms to of market participants with businesses.

Besides ethics, code of ethics also is the important part in good business ethics that can be applied in organization. Code of ethics can be defined as a guide of principles designed to help professionals conduct business honestly and with integrity. A code of ethics document may outline the mission and values of the business or organization, how professionals are supposed to approach problems, the ethical principles based on the organization‘s core values and the standards to which the professional will be held.

In order to complete this individual assignment, I was appointed to interview one of the staff of UiTM to get information regarding the issues which is “why good ethics is a good business in Strategic Management”. The person that I had interview is Miss Rohani Ismail, an assistant registrar of Academic Affairs (HEA) at UiTM, Terengganu. For the interview that I have conducted, some questions were submitted regarding this ethics issues in order to know work ethics applied in UiTM.

The first question that I asked is to know her opinion about the work ethic applied at HEA department, either it fulfil its code of ethics in UiTM and she said that work ethic at UiTM has its own value and even UiTM have the same code of ethics practiced in every department, but there is a different work ethic that is practiced in all department depend on the attitude of the individual. As example, the actual regulation did not state how long to rest or go out to eat, but there are some workers use to get out of the office by using that reason.

She said, as workers we need to understand there are responsibilities that must be performed on our job and the individual should understand their actions whether to break the rules or not. Next is in term of managing the office, if there are mistakes made by other staff, what actions she did in order to correct those mistakes and she tell that she will look at the types of mistakes if it is related to the work performed, she will criticize directly in front of all the staff.

This action is not the intention to embarrassing that staff but in order to teach other staff so that they will not make same mistake in the future and basically the critics is done politely. Furthermore, I also asked her in term of managing the office at HEA department or UiTM management is there bias or favouritism occurs between boss and staff. She just informed that there is no bias or favouritism practised in UiTM or any department in UiTM because they will accept any best ideas from their staff even they just subordinate staff.

Bribery is one of the bad ethic that now widely practiced in most of the organization and this issues had been asked to her to get her opinion and at the same time to know either it happen in UiTM or not. Miss Rohani said that according on her experience working with UiTM for 15 years; she has heard the bribery issues only once when she served in the student intake department at UiTM Shah Alam.

The bribery issue is known only through conversations among staff that bribery happen in the admission process. For example, the old system of student intake is using application of OMR form that need to be sent in the envelope and one case happen when she received the envelope of OMR form with the amount of money. She just thought that there is bribery element and she takes an action by sending back the money to the mailing address of the envelope in order to avoid the bribery case.

After that case, she never heard any case of bribery that related with UiTM. In term of social policy, she said that based on her experience UiTM are doing social policy through academic mission which if there is external event that inviting UiTM for giving speech or talks, UiTM will readily available and there is also commitment from UiTM towards this academic mission by opening booth for attracting peoples.

I also asked her about her satisfaction towards code of ethics and social policy at UiTM, whether it need to be improved or not and she just give it own opinion that she just follow the code of ethics provide by UiTM because she said that people who make such a policy is the expert, so why should not satisfied with the policy as long as it is good for everyone. Besides that, in term of love affairs she inform that there is love affair going on among the staff at UiTM and she had no problem about it because based on her evaluation on this issue through her work experience, it never interfere with the performance of work among her staff.

She also thinks that love affair helps in facilitate in terms of increased job performance because there are many staff who have long-distance love affair affect the job performance. Miss Rohani also did not deny that a love affair in the workplace can also have a negative impact if they do not have limits. In some organization, there is some case that occurs related to sexual harassments among staff and I asked her in order to know whether this issue ever happened in UiTM. Miss Rohani told me that she had experienced towards this sexual harassment issue but only a minor annoyance that oriented jokes.

Although this may be just a joke, but she use a hard warning to the perpetrator to prevent a similar incident happening again and so far she is not experienced it anymore. To close the interview, I asked her opinion on why good ethics is important in the work ethic especially in UiTM and she just give simple answer by saying as a Muslims, people should follow the principles that have been applied through the principles of Islam that can guide people to always be responsible for performing any work with the right guidance and teaching people in a particularly good attitude in complying with work that had been stated.