Fairness Principle

Compare and contrast the guiding principles of the Global Business Standards Codex and the Mixed Framework principles. Global business standards codex captures eight major underlying principles in which ethical behavior can be interpreted and evaluated. The eight ethical principles are fiduciary, property, reliability, transparency, dignity. fairness, citizenship and responsiveness. Fiduciary Principle. As part of the legal structure of a business organization, each officer and director of a company has a legal fiduciary duty to act in the best interest of the stakeholders and other employees within the firm.

Furthermore, there is also an implied fiduciary duty for every employee within the organization to also act in a way that generates positive benefits for the firm. Property Principle. The property principle is based on the belief that every employee should respect property as well as the rights of the owners of the property. This principle has been expanded to intangible property and now also includes the misappropriation of intellectual property or other types of information.

It expected that an employee would protect the tangible and intangible assets of the firm and the employee should be a good steward to the resources the employee has access to. Reliability Principle. It is based on the belief that it is the employee’s responsibility to honor the commitments he or she has made to the firm. It is expected that the employees will follow through with the promises and commitments that have been made between the employees and the firm. Transparency Principle. It is based on the belief that every employee should conduct business in a truthful and open manner.

It is expected that the employees will not make decisions based on a personal agenda and not to act in a descriptive manner and to keep accurate and current records of all the business obligations that are currently the responsibility of the employee. Dignity Principle. It is based on the belief that each employee needs to respect the dignity of all individuals. It encourages the enhancement of human development not only within the company and marketplace, but also in the society at large. Therefore, any type of humiliation coercion, or other type of human offenses is in direct violation of the dignity principle.

Fairness Principle. It is based on the belief that stakeholders who have a vested interest in the firm should be treated fairly. There are four types of fairness: reciprocal fairness, distributive fairness, fair competition and procedural fairness. Reciprocal fairness addresses the issues of treating another party fairly and having the other party treat the firm fairly. Distributive fairness is based on the assumption that the allocation of finite resources within the firm will be distributed fairly based on maximizing the benefits of those allocations.

Fair competition focuses on the fair treatment given by the firm as it interacts with its existing and potential competitors, Procedural fairness deals with ensuring that parties that interact with the firm are treated fairly from a due process perspective. Citizenship Principle. It is based on the belief that every employee should act as a responsible citizen in the community. It is also expected that employees respect the laws of the community. Furthermore, it is expected that employees protect and preserve public goods or commons available to the community. It is also expected that employees should be cooperative with community officials.

Responsiveness Principle. It is based on the belief that employees have a responsibility to respond to requests for information about the operations from the various stakeholders. As a result, employees must not only reply to stakeholders’ request for information, but also be responsive to ideas presented by the stakeholders to help improve the operations of the firm. A responsive firm is expected to react in a timely manner to resolve any outstanding issues that have been raised by the employees, interest groups, suppliers, the local community and any other stakeholders that has a vested interest in the company.

Mixed Framework principles:

• a)Fidelity: an individual needs to keep explicit and implicit promises.
• b)Reparation: an individual must act an repairing the consequences for previous wrongful acts.
• c)Gratitude: an individual must be able to show gratitude for the kindnesses that others have given him or her.
• d)Justice: an individual should try to see that any goods are fairly distributed.
• e)Beneficence: an individual should focus on trying to improve the lives of others.
• f)Self-improvement: an individual should improve oneself by focusing on virtue and intelligence.
• g)Noninjury: an individual should not cause any harm to others.