David Lemuel E. Garcia                                                                                           02/05/08

10564721      BS-IM

Hard Like Water

Ethics in Business

By Vincent Di Norcia

Chapter 1: Owning Values

                        “… a root cause of the franchise system tensions is the restrictive confinement of what should be an inclusive business partnership system within the hard shell of the private property system.”

            - having a franchise is a great opportunity of both helping the franchised company and at the same time, helping the community, however, there are certain factors that do affect the business because of the system of franchising. Others tend to think that the franchise they had is “fully” owned by them and that they can do whatever they want on it even if it breaks the arrangements they made before the franchising started. Such errors do affect also the whole business because it poorly adapts to the market changes thus making their sales and returns fall down badly.

Summary of the Chapter:

            - this chapter shows the ethical and functional limitations of the old private property system and its comparison with the new business ownership system. It also shows the stakeholder’s role in the bigger picture of the organization. The corporate government’s help in the organization is also being tackled here in this chapter. Franchising and its effects on the business and the community is also shown, advantages and disadvantages of implementing this kind of system and its overall impact in the business.

Chapter 2: Managing Values

                        “All courses of action involves risks”

            - Yes indeed this is true because there’s always a consequence for every action that we take. Risks can be mitigated and this is one thing that we need to learn in order to lessen the risks that we can encounter on our way.

Summary of the Chapter:

            - A risk matrix is being discussed in this chapter which does the “do no harm” type of risk management. This risk matrix shows the difference between capital and pay-off’s risk which offers a much user-friendly type of risk-mitigation/minimizing management style. The difference between executive management and administrative management is being suggested that we should learn how to distinguish it in order to create a much better risk mitigation plan.

Chapter 3: Organizing Values

                        “Organizations are complex…. The real challenge is to learn how to deal with this complexity.”

            - the complexity of organizations give its stake holders the opportunity to learn how to make the organization more easier to manage that is why techniques and stuff started to bloom out on how to become a more uncomplex type of company meaning the processes that take place on the company become more and more faster and easier to operate. Coming out with different types of decomplexing the complexity of the organization and implementing it can be so helpful for the people who works with it so are the people they cater.

Summary of the Chapter:

            - Ethical codes are needed in a company, this is one thing that they emphasize in this chapter. Value statements, Compliance codes, and Performance codes are the three ethical codes that they need to implement in the company in order to organize their values in the company. The conflict of loyalty and voice in the autocratic corporation is also being reviewed in this chapter. Social integration is very helpful in designing ethical corporate culture and build on exchange.