Business ethics comprises of a bunch of moral standards and qualities that administer the conduct of the

association as for what is right as well as what is wrong.

Bangladesh achieved its independence alongside India and Pakistan in 1947. It was separated from
Pakistan through a freedom battle in 1971. From that point it was mostly under different military
systems. The democratic rule started during the 1990s. The current government run by Awami League
came in power after a victory of winning the majority votes in the election of 2009. As Bangladesh has an
economy experiencing significant change, the transformative course of changing its business ethical
qualities, standards and moralities has enormously hampered its authoritative culture and improvement.
Business associations are not yet completely carrying out global principles or codes of morals, however,
Islamic inspiration altogether can bestow the hierarchical morals in Bangladesh. In current days,
business ethics is a consuming issue. The capital market of the nation (all out market capitalization of
$32,000 million around as at 2nd February, 2010 has gotten new existence with the start of vote based
interaction in 1990s. The economic growth of Bangladesh is described by a private area run fast
industrialization strategy, set apart by huge unfamiliar speculations and commodity situated
industrialization. Such a financial system has empowered Bangladesh to accomplish a steady normal
yearly monetary development of around 7% in the course of the last decade. Notwithstanding, financial
development has brought about numerous unfavorable social, moral and ecological effects, expanding
the interest for stakeholder engagement and more prominent transparency and responsibility in
organizations. The main representative related issues of concern, especially in the pieces of clothing and
material area, and furthermore in other product arranged organizations, are health and security at 6
work, child labor, human rights, and equal rights. From 1990, there have been 115 factory firing incident
which killed around 300 individuals and resulted 2700 injuries. Under global tension, child labor is being
dispensed with yet the restoration and government assistance of these ex- child laborers have been
overlooked. The media consistently report infringement of common liberties in processing plants,
especially in the commodity arranged units, identified with the strange length of working hours,
neglected wages, compulsory pregnancy tests, and cruel working conditions. Industrial contamination is
a significant environmental issue in Bangladesh. Tannery organizations in the Hajaribag area of Dhaka
city and other modern units, clearly pollute nearby rivers and streams consistently with industrial
wastes. Additionally, these worker and ecological imbalances, issues of corruption and consumer rights
have aroused critical concerns among the general people. Bangladesh was positioned as one of the 30
most corrupted countries on the world as indicated by the 2006 Transparency Internationals Ranking.
Business people group's contribution in deceptive and corruption activities, like bribery and tax evasion
were broadly revealed in the media. Bangladesh has a lot of rules and guidelines (for example, Factories
Act, 1965, Industrial Relations Ordinance, 1969, Employment of Labor (Standing Orders) Act, 1965,
Payment of Wages Act, 1936, Environmental Protection Act, 1995 and Workmen Compensation Act,
1923) acquired from the British colonial regime. These laws are intended to control the social and
natural conduct of the organizations working in Bangladesh. Nonetheless, as a general rule they are
regularly ridiculed because of absence of authorization by the pertinent organizations which seem, by all
accounts, to be bad, feeble and insufficient. They likewise need solid political will and essential assets like
labor, abilities and information to have the option to carry out the important laws.

The ethics of a particular business can be diverse. They apply not only on how the business interacts
with the world at large, but also to their one-on-one dealings with a single customer. Many businesses
have gained a bad reputation just by being in business. To some people, businesses are interested in
making money which is called capitalism in its purest form. Making money has been the main purpose in
many global brand businesses and can be concluded that they not too highly concern of good business
ethics. Eventually, many of them have been fined millions for breaking ethical business laws. A low level
of ethics in the business sector is a part of wider socio-economic and political problems faced by many
countries: often loopholes in legal and business regulation contribute to the corruptions that can
disarray business operations. As the globalization process is in progression, the world begins to resemble
a global village, so business ethics has become an international issue. Business ethic measurement has
been constructed by World Bank in 2009 based on ten different component factors for about 180
countries. It is shown that Singapore having the best ranking while Bangladesh is ranked quite
unfavorably in 119th position. This ranking does not give a good picture of business ethics in the country
and indicates that further improvements in its institutional, structural and policy environments are
needed. In recent years, the issue of business ethics has gained increased attention. Ethics has an
immense impact on the brands and reputations as well as on customer trust and investor confidence.
Hence, the concepts of transparency, good governance, and political reformation have come to the
cultural spotlight of Bangladeshi elites. But there is very little research that has examined ethical issues
in the newly emerging economy of Bangladesh. The study of ethical issues in Bangladesh is important to
understand the views on ethics and ethical management practices. Thus, the prime focus of this study is
to surface the ethical practices and programs among the organizations is desperately felt.
Spurning of natural laws is proven by reluctance of the manufacturing companies to introduce Effluent
Treatment Plants (ETP) which were commanded in 1995. Because of an appeal by the Bangladesh
Environmental Lawyers’ Association Bangladesh High Court has recently requested to carry out the
prerequisite of ETPs by 2010. This move came against the setting of an environmental disaster that
Bangladesh is looking because of the huge contamination by the industries. Government pioneers and
arising pressure bunches have requested straightforwardness in all circles of public life, including ethical
strategic policies. Notwithstanding inside homegrown strain there has been truly pressing commodity
situated organizations to cling to the standards of worldwide work rehearses. The outer strain for moral
strategic policies mostly radiates from worldwide offices and enormous western partnerships. Also,
auxiliaries of worldwide organizations keep on being feeling the squeeze from global hall gatherings to
further develop straightforwardness and responsibility in their tasks in emerging nations. As a result of
these tensions it is broadly guessed that organizations in Bangladesh will be requested to follow the
prerequisites from social bookkeeping principles and corporate implicit rules that are being created and
embraced in western developed nations. In view of an overview of 100 recorded organizations in
Bangladesh they presume that the level and degree of social and ecological 8 revelations are poor.
Disregarding the helpless work rehearses uncovered in nearby and global media each of the studied
organizations revealed worker related issues while just 47% and 19% unveiled on local area and natural
issues separately. Almost, in 90% cases a large portion of these exposures were positive. The degree of
revelation seems to have expanded in the course of the most recent 10 years and this expanding pattern
is probably going to proceed. Nonetheless, it is yet to be seen whether such exposures mirror the real
factors on the ground. In a subjective substance investigation of 87 organizations' yearly reports
reasoned that CSR rehearses in Bangladesh mirrored the interests of incredible financial partners
disregarding the interests of powerless social partners like nearby local area, climate and the more
extensive society. This is confirmed by the exhibition of Bangladeshi organizations on the issues of child
labor, health and security which have been featured before in this segment. It contains the prohibitory
activities at the work environment. Here essential four standards of business morals are inspected and
reveals insight into these ideas. Business morals is the conduct that a business sticks to in its every day
dealings with the world.
The study is based on primary data collected through a survey questionnaire employing a purposive
sampling technique. The population of the study consists of an e-mail list of senior-level human
resources professionals and individual contributors, supervisors, managers and executives collected
from the database of Bangladesh Society for Human Resources Management (BSHRM). A total of 63
completed questionnaires were distributed through their mail addresses and 46 (76%) were returned
out of which 3 (4.7%) were rejected due to incomplete response, and finally 43 (68.25%) have taken into
account for analysis. The questionnaire consists of eight core questions requiring respondents to rate
multiple items within each core dimension. The response scored on a five-point Likert scale ranging from
1 as not important to 5 extremely important. The survey questions address the below-mentioned
dimensions:

 The importance of business ethics to the organization

 Environmental factors driving business ethics

 Establishing and sustaining a business ethics culture

 Business ethics practices and programs

 Drivers of unethical behavior

 Ethical leadership behaviors

 Business ethics effectiveness measures

 Ethics-related global workplace issues

A responsible ethics and compliance programs have specific, measurable, action oriented, relevant, and
timely performance measures which tends to drive performance. The results of effectiveness measures
of ethics programs shows the output relating to the ways of assessing the effectiveness of ethics
programs. The results indicate that conducting ethics survey, ethics audit, and collecting ethical
complaints of customers are the key methods. Completion of ethics goals and associated business
results, checking fraud, and financial malfeasance are also important ways to effectiveness measure.
When theft, fraud and lawsuits occur, the organization must often assume a defensive posture and go
into damage control. These indicators can be a sign that the other ethics programs are not working
effectively.

The responses of 43 organizations which were purposively selected employing structured questionnaires
from eight dimensions. Ensuring ethical behavior of organization requires creativity, quality, and
efficiency. Goals and expectations need to be integrated with codes of conduct, and results need to be
evaluated, measured, and constantly re-examined. Rules and regulations are, and will remain, the most
influential external drivers of corporate behavior. Corporate leaders need to communicate ethical values
throughout the organization and must do more than issuing a series of instructions in order to establish
and sustain an ethical culture. This study has few limitations. As it used purposive sampling, the results
may not be a true representation for the two cities. This research might also be limited due to the issue
of ‘social desirability’ where subjects may respond to what they think is 'socially desirable'. However, the
best effort has been made to minimize this by given respondents the assurance that the questionnaires
will be treated anonymously. Future studies may use larger organizational samples from more cities in
the country and include the effect of other variables not covered in the present intervention to create a
more detailed understanding