Business Ethical Values: A Critical Key Success Factor for Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim Asset)

Abstract

Business ethics have a considerable part to play in pursuit of the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (ZIM ASSET) success. With hindsight one notices that past debates focused exclusively on governance processes and procedures while paying little attention to what might be the right way to do business. This, in turn, led to the tightening of regulations in various sectors rather than considering ethical and behavioral issues. The objectives of this paper are to diagnose ethical aspects of corporate governance policy debates and frameworks and how behaviors are becoming part of the corporate governance agenda in response to the crisis of trust in business. The methodology was entirely desktop research coupled with an email survey, targeting corporate directors among some influential organizations. This made the research very effective, quite quick and cheap with most of the basic information easily fetched. The research is quite significant in terms of the development of governance and its impact on the implementation of the ZimAsset agenda. The literature clearly demonstrates and emphasizes the importance of company culture in effective governance. It also notes that corporate governance measures have typically been driven by what makes financial sense and business efficacy whereas a focus on behavioral issues is widely considered to be a key element of serious board evaluation and that the role of culture and ethical principles in cementing effective governance is gaining credence. The findings and conclusions are that in order to foster trust and demonstrate respect, companies must account for their actions. There is an ethical issue in that fairness and honesty are typically absent when there is a conflict of interest. Transparency and disclosure are ethical issues for boards as they seek to meet stakeholder’s expectations. This justifies why the government asserts in chapter one of the Zim Asset document that “Additionally, a National Corporate Governance Framework will be launched and implemented resulting in the re-invention of Government and private sector business to be more citizen-friendly”.