The reason why many new businesses fail in South Africa is because organizations do not follow ethical principles of management

The reason why many new businesses fail in South Africa is because organizations do not follow ethical principles of management.

This essay will examine the difficulties and faults of new businesses in South Africa with regard to ethics and particularly principles of management. Although the ethical principle that will be focused upon in this essay is integrity. Since integrity is a broadest principle which can be applied to almost any ethical principle of management.

There are no universally agreed rules of ethics, no absolute standards or controls, and no fixed and firm reference points. The modern Oxford English Dictionary says:"Ethical - Relating to moral principles or the branch of knowledge dealing with these..."The International Business Ethics Institute (IBEI) provides the solution of the problematic question of defining ethics. It incorporates a variety of concepts into and combines concepts to create a smorgasbord of definitions, ideals and concepts into a form of understandable definitions which can only exist in plurality (Erasmus, 2004).

Buchanan Street

Journal of Business Ethics

Society for Business Ethics

The term "ethics" poses a problem in itself as it cannot be universally converted to any language and so organizations have included the synonyms 'integrity',' business practices', 'responsible business conduct' in an attempt to identify some uniformity to the tentative definitions (Erasmus, 2004).

Malan 2003, gives five levels of business ethics: individual level, organizational level, association, societal and international. This essay focuses specifically on the level in which individuals' ethics affect the organisation (Erasmus, 2004).

To distinguish where South Africa lies in relation to Africa or perhaps the world, the King II Report gives academic weight to what many feel is the current situation in South Africa regarding ethics - a 4.8 out of 10. With scandals involving present and future government, officials as well as the next President involved in fraud allegations, the rating has surely dropped since...