Articles – Page 3 – Ethical Ecommerce

Engaging in Ethical E-Commerce

September 19, 2019

Gone are the days when businesses just did business. Now, it’s almost expected that business values and ethics will play a significant and enduring role in a company’s identity.

From the products they sell to the way they treat their employees, businesses are finding that they no longer can separate what they do from what they believe — and customers want to know what the businesses they deal with stand for. Corporate social responsibility, or CSR — the merging of ethics with business — is not simply a buzzword. It’s increasingly becoming a best practice.

“Aligning a business with its social and ethical values has demonstrated positive impact,” said Lauren J. Litton, founder of I.S.P. Consulting.

“For example, it can improve employee retention, boost the company’s reputation, attract both investors and consumers, and further critical environmental and social justice efforts,” she told the E-Commerce Times.

What Is Ethical Culture, and Why Does It Matter?

September 16, 2019

Culture exists in the space between what an organization professes and what it does. Jay Rosen explains why it’s important to pay attention to culture: disconnects can be quite costly.

Over the past few months, senior leaders at both the Department of Justice (DOJ), and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), have given speeches discussing the need for appropriate corporate culture around compliance. So, this brings up our first question for our next five-part series, what is corporate culture?

Is fair trade finished?

July 23, 2019

Fairtrade changed the way we shop. But major companies have started to abandon it and set up their own in-house imitations – threatening the very idea of fair trade.
It wasn’t very long ago that a banana was just a banana – just a curved, yellow fruit. All you knew, if you bought a bunch in 1986, was that they cost around 97p per kilo. You weren’t told if they were organic or pesticide-free. You didn’t know if they came from Costa Rica or the Dominican Republic. And you certainly weren’t invited to worry about the farmers who grew them – or if their children went to school, or whether their villages had clinics. You just picked up your bananas and walked to the next aisle for your coffee or tea or chocolate, none the wiser about where they came from either, or about the people who farmed them.

How to Design an Ethical Organization

June 1, 2019

From Volkswagen’s emissions fiasco to Wells Fargo’s deceptive sales practices to Uber’s privacy intrusions, corporate scandals are a recurring reality in global business. Compliance programs increasingly take a legalistic approach to ethics that focuses on individual accountability. Yet behavioral science suggests that people are ethically malleable, so creating an ethical culture means thinking about ethics not simply as a belief problem but also as a design problem. The authors suggest four ways to make being good as easy as possible: Connect ethical principles to strategies and policies, keep ethics top of mind, reward ethical behavior through a variety of incentives, and encourage ethical norms in day-to-day practices.

Transparency In Business: 5 Ways To Build Trust

April 3, 2019

When I was growing up, we didn’t know what restaurants and fast food joints put into their food. We didn’t know where a company’s products came from. And we certainly didn’t know the values and beliefs of a company’s CEO.

And then in a flash, all of that changed.

As entrepreneurs, we’re held to a higher standard now more than ever. With online platforms like social media, review sites, and discussion forums, transparency is critical to business success.

Transparency in business can be a great thing.

You made a commitment to your customers, investors and lenders, employees, and yourself to build the best venture you could. You might as well show everyone how you’re holding up your end of the bargain.

For ecommerce retailers, sustainability is more than just a fad

March 11, 2019

Once viewed as a costly exercise, sustainability is being embraced by a growing number of retailers as a strategy that delivers cost savings and satisfies the demands of consumers.

Companies are exploring automation tools to reduce the amount of packaging used, trying to find alternatives to plastic, and looking to install solar panels to reduce their carbon footprint.

With the rise of the conscious consumer, more ecommerce retailers are putting the time and the effort into making sure they have more sustainable practices. Some have found it can be the decider between a customer buying off their site or a competitor’s.

To chart a more sustainable path and manage the increased consumer scrutiny of their business practices, retailers are also hiring more professionals whose main responsibility is to manage the ethical side of the business. Others are embedding sustainable practices into their DNA.

How to Keep Up with the Rise of Ethical Ecommerce

January 14, 2019

Do you test on animals? Did you really need to use such a big box? Where has this been shipped from? How and where was this product made?

These are all questions brands are being asked every day about how ethical your brand is. Without an answer, you may find your sales dropping and consumers looking elsewhere.

With environmental concerns becoming progressively more prominent in modern society, an increasing number of people, particularly millennials, are paying close attention to the ethics of brands. As this post will explore, it’s more important than ever to focus on consumer activism and keep up with the ever-growing rise of ethical ecommerce.

The Comprehensive Business Case for Sustainability

October 21, 2016

Today’s executives are dealing with a complex and unprecedented brew of social, environmental, market, and technological trends. These require sophisticated, sustainability-based management. Yet executives are often reluctant to place sustainability core to their company’s business strategy in the mistaken belief that the costs outweigh the benefits. On the contrary, academic research and business experience point to quite the opposite.

Embedded sustainability efforts clearly result in a positive impact on business performance. Drawing from our own research and our colleagues’ research in this area, we have created a sustainability business case for the 21st century corporate executive. Hoping to alleviate their concerns, this article also provides concrete examples of how sustainability benefits the bottom line.

The troubling evolution of corporate greenwashing

August 21, 2016

The term “greenwashing” was coined in the 1980s to describe outrageous corporate environmental claims. Three decades later, the practice has grown vastly more sophisticated.
In the mid-1980s, oil company Chevron commissioned a series of expensive television and print ads to convince the public of its environmental bonafides. Titled People Do, the campaign showed Chevron employees protecting bears, butterflies, sea turtles and all manner of cute and cuddly animals.

Category: Articles