Saturday 2 May 2015

Ethical Consciousness

         Ethical consciousness is an important entrepreneurship trait in a business operation. Ethics is a set of principles that helps to judge what is right or wrong, fair or unfair and proper or improper. It also outlines the responsibilities and moral obligations to the society. Ethical standards in business are crucial for a smooth functioning economy. If ethical standard are abandoned, it will lead to a lower quality of life with less desirable goods and services at higher prices.
   An example of entrepreneur with ethical consciousness is Richard Branson, the founder and the chairman of the world famous Virgin Group that holds more than two hundred companies in over thirty countries today, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, Australia and South Africa. He started his entrepreneurial life in the music industry and later expanded into other sectors making him a billionaire. From a mail order record retailer in 1970, the Virgin Group has continuously developed successful businesses in various sectors ranging from mobile telephony, travel, leisure, financial services, music, and holidays. One of the businesses developed is Virgin Galactic. (Branson, 2014)
 After Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo crashed into California's Mojave Desert, having one test pilot killed and the other injured, some of the people who booked the flight tickets asked for money returns. Normally there are very few executives and communicators have had to publicly give explanation on the deadly crash of a spacecraft except for those who work for national space agencies. In a press conference, Richard Branson admitted that “we fell short” and would correct mistakes. He said that they are not going to push on blindly and they are going to learn from mistakes. He promised to push on with the program once they had investigated the reason for the crash. Besides that, a series of blog posts about the crash and how Virgin Galactic is taking corrective action has been published by him instead of denying any faults and concealing the mistakes. 

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