assignment-

Introduction
The paper critically analyzes the concept of business ethics in FTI Consulting. FTI
provides legal, financial and reputational consulting services to the organizations internationally.
The company operates in five segments: Corporate Finance/Restructuring, Forensic and
Litigation Consulting, Economic Consulting, Technology and Strategic Communications.
Cu
ently, the company is having a market capitalization of $1.68 billion with an enterprise value
of $2.15 billion. The report will analyze the company on the basis of its operations and
financials. The operational analysis includes the analysis of products, segments and geographies
of the company.
Business ethics at FTI Consulting
Ethics, values and social responsibility are very necessary in marketing. For running any
successful operation of marketing, ethics and social responsibility are required. This is because
every company is selling its product to some end customer, either retail customer of B2B. This
entails the company to be socially responsible towards the society of people which are a part of
their value chain.
FTI Consulting provides consulting and advisory services to its organizational clients. As of
FY09, the services provided by the company included the following:
1. Strategic Business Consulting
2. Strategic Financial Communications and Investor Relations
3. Restructuring and Recapitalization Communication
4. Reputation management and public affairs
5. Corporate positioning and
and communications
6. Mergers and Acquisitions, Business Combinations and Capital Market Communications
7. Proprietary Research Tools and Strategic Planning
8. Corporate Social Responsibility and Strategic Philanthropy
9. Internal Communications and Employee Alignment
10. Design and Marketing Communications
11. Media Relations
12. Media and Presentation Training
13. Consumer Affairs
The company has a group of clients, which includes organizational clients from fortune 500
companies, FTSE 100 companies, law firms and local, state and various governmental agencies
in U.S and other countries throughout the world.
Business Ethics are a form of professional ethics or corporate ethics examining ethical
principles as well as moral of ethical problems su
ounding the business environment. Business
ethics is applied to forms as well as aspects of business conduct and it decides the conduct of
employees of an organization and the business house as a whole (Elibol, 2009). Two types of
usiness ethics are normative and descriptive ethics. The corporate practice of business ethics is
mainly limited to normative ethics. Business ethics are necessary in an organization to align the
conduct of employees and organization to the mission, vision and goal of the company. It
decides on whether a company has an ethical framework or is resorting to unethical practices of
trade and business (Hunt, 2006).
(Stanley Krolick, 1998) defined for styles of ethical decision making. The first style
identified by him was individualistic which was primarily driven by personal survival,
preservation as well as natural reason. Krolick defined second style as the altruists, a person who
is majorly concerned for others. Pragmatists are the third style of ethical decision making, which
is defined as the person who behaves depending upon the situations. The fourth style was the
idealist which means that the decisions are influenced by principles and rules.
Business ethics sometimes clashes as well as overlaps with the fundamental purposes of
the company. For e.g. primary aim of the company could be to maximize the return for its
shareholders, but still it is sometimes deemed unethical in a way the company considers interests
of the class of stakeholders (La
ai, 2007). Another important aspect of business ethics is
corporate governance and corporate social responsibility. Corporate governance policies decides
the ethical framework of the company, as the executives, board members and all other employees
of the company are required to abide by the same set of procedures (La
ai, 2007).
(Social Contracts and Marketing Ethics, n.d.)Companies as a part of business ethics and
corporate governance also practices social responsibility which benefits them in the long run. In
the cu
ent scenario, corporate social responsibility becomes the part of any company‟s corporate
governance policies. A separate budget is made by the companies these days towards their social
and environment responsibilities. It has also been observed by the marketers that the company
that is more socially responsible is prefe
ed over the company that is not so socially responsible
y its customers.
The companies attributing some part of their earning to the society and environment are
likely to get more goodwill in the long run (Kirk, n.d.). For e.g. Go Green logo by many
companies like GE and Philips has helped them attain more goodwill. Also, being socially
esponsible through environment friendly products of through sacrificing a very small portion of
product profit towards society helps the organization in getting positive marketing from its target
customers.
FTI follows a three process strategy for implementing the ethics balance scorecard in its
organization. These are:
1. Establishing key linkages-get connected: The step in the scorecard implementation
process provided linkage to mission, vision, strategy, goals, KPIs, and initiatives within
the FTI. More importantly through this step, the scorecard was aligned to the budget and
the information sharing regarding processes was made possible. The scorecards were
made to address three vital areas i.e. Key performance indicators, staff...