Start Micro Enterprise Ethics & Social Responsibility Vocabulary Flashcards

Proper business behavior beyond complying with legal requirements. A simple rule guides business ethics, the same basic rule that should guide all human behavior: act towards your stakeholders as you would hope they would act towards you.

Individuals and companies often promise to keep information they learn secret. They often formalize this promise by signing a Non-Disclosure Agreement (or NDA). Example: the bank signs an NDA when an entrepreneur submits lots of personal information on a bank loan application.

A situation in which an individual might take an action to his/her advantage that would be to the disadvantage of a person or company that believes this individual is serving them. Example: a customer tells a supplier in confidence that they are buying lots of a specific product to advertise a major sale in two weeks. It would be a conflict of interest for that supplier to go to competitor stores and use this information to get them to buy more of this product and put it on sale immediately.

Actions entrepreneurs and companies take that go beyond their financial self-interest. These actions are voluntary but often reflect the personal beliefs of business leaders about what their companies can or should accomplish. Many companies tie the actions they take for corporate social responsibility to initiatives that benefit their business. Example: the local pet store promises to donate $1 to the local animal shelter for every pet owner who buys the pet food they have on sale over a weekend.

Treating stakeholders as the entrepreneur would hope others would treat him/her.

Non-physical assets created by individuals that hold the exclusive legal right to commercialize. A copyright gives the author the sole right to benefit economically from what he/she wrote. A patent gives the inventor the sole right to benefit commercially from his/her invention. A trademark gives the registering individual or company the sole right to benefit from a brand or image he/she created. In each case the creator of the intellectual property has the right to benefit financially from his/her creation by selling the rights to (or "licensing") their intellectual property to a third party.

The practice of operating openly and communicating fully, providing stakeholders with a clear understanding of how your enterprise operates.