Leadership ethics and trust in global business expansion

Global Leadership

The role of ethics is important in business even though there are significant factors that oppose their consideration. Business has also taken a more global and international role ensuring that new relationships and understandings about political and regional events must occur. The difficult landscape that presents power and profits as paramount values makes leadership an integral part of any system or organization that wishes to both succeed at business while maintaining a proper ethical attitude.

The purpose of this essay is to examine and investigate the factors that must be considered before expanding a business. In this example the business in question is constructing a new manufacturing outlet and potential environments must be analyzed and scanned in order to fully understand the best location for this expansion. The essay will address the issues that are involved in such a scan and provide examples of this has been successfully accomplished in the past.

Establishing Trust

This endeavor of expansion requires the trust of many key players. Establishing trust is the single most important aspect of leadership in all practical matters. Those employed to follow leadership will do so in most cases because of their dependence on income, but those who follow orders because they trust and believe in the message inspires the employee to give more than their own self to the greater good and dedicates efforts to the main cause while sacrificing their own personal ambitions and dreams.

Trust is the baseline for ethical codes and procedures. McDonald (2008) expressed this notion as well. Besides trust he also included six universal moral values for a corporate code of ethics. These included: "trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship" (p. 350). A code is just words however and they will ring empty unless practical and material behavior results from these words. This is the challenge of leadership.

Leadership's challenge is not in design or execution of a specific task. Rather, leaders looking to expand their business must be generalists in thought and have their hands in all of the tasks. This is impossible to accomplish unless one is willing to lead by example.

Corporations and the capitalistic way of business has been very competitive and cut throat in its nature. Many governments are weary of business corrupting their natural resources and populations with corporate values and profit schemes. A more naive populace in the past could be wooed with bribes and jobs, but today's world requires a greater sense of purpose for corporate outlets, especially global organizations.

Global Factors To Consider

Today's world is ripe with sustainability issues that specifically effect different aspects of the environment. For our purposes, some of these factors are more relevant than others. Resource allocation is very important in this expansion. For this change we must consider the following questions: How will this expansion effect the local eco-system? What is the effect on pollution? Are we saving energy? What is our recycling plan? How much fossil fuels are we consuming in this expansion? Are there materials that are more sustainable than others that we can use in our construction?

Environmental Scanning Plan

The environmental scan must include actions that anticipate possible routes of possibility that relate to sustainability and ethical issues. In this plan a solid understanding of the demographics of the target expansion area must be completed in order to fully understand the human make up of the territory. Simulations must be run to predict different outcomes for different approaches to this expansion. Unexpected forces must be incorporated into this scan as much as possible in an attempt to foresee the more difficult opportunities for danger to present itself. Being flexible and open to ideas is essential during this process as imaginative skills are necessary to identify problems that are not so obvious.

Conclusions

The use of deceit and trickery is inherent within business practices. The nature of capitalism and trade therefore stands against the idea of sustainable products and reusable energy. One stance accepts limitations the other does not. Reconciliation and finding a compromise through consensus can only be achieved when leaders step forward and recognize this impasse for what it is. Profit and gain need to be redefined into simpler terms where defeat of one's opponent is not mandatory.

The greater good is always sought after by those in leadership positions and this should be no different. Global problems require large and general ideas that ignore specific and limiting systems that tend to focus on past problems instead of focusing on future solutions. Actions speak louder than words and today's leadership may have to work in silence and in the shadows if such a transformation is to occur. Until that happens, however, expect conflict and stress if you choose to expand a business anywhere that is resonates with ethical and moral principles.