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How Corona Reshaped Business Ethics

Poslovna etika u doba krize
Poslovna etika u doba krize / Image by: foto

In times of crisis, it is not only politicians who are in the spotlight, but also companies and their managers. For this,  says Barbara Stöttinger, Dean of WU Executive Academy, there is a good reason. Whether a company can survive tough times and whether employees can keep their jobs directly depends on their decisions. Every business move is carefully monitored, and business ethics is a matter that is given particular weight.

The pandemic context has tightened the criteria, and what was considered normal until yesterday, such as applications for financial support, payment of bonuses, severance pay, and dividends, has suddenly become morally questionable. Business ethics, as is customary in times of crisis, has undergone a transformation during the coronavirus era.

– More than ever before, the world has become incredibly complex, changeable, and uncertain. Due to dramatic changes in the market and technology, in the job description of every CEO, in my opinion, the most important thing will be precisely creative and visionary change management. In these processes, the most important thing is to overcome fear and resistance to change, initiate positive changes, and motivate people to explore, be creative, and give their best, that is, to become the best possible version of themselves and develop their own potentials and talents in the service of excellent business for the company – explains how to adapt to the new situation Dalibor Greganić, CEO of Profil Kletta. 

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Dalibor Greganić
 

This company, like almost one hundred thousand others in Croatia, applied for state support for job preservation, but it is also one of the thousand that decided to return the support because it is needed by others.

– In recent years, we have been intensely dedicated to designing innovative educational content and investing in the development of new technologies in education, and given that due to circumstances, only digital communication was suddenly possible, this period has shown to what extent we were visionaries and in a way anticipated the future. We turned the situation with the coronavirus to our advantage because it turned out that only through the development of digital educational content and the creation of our own IZZI platform for digital textbooks could we bridge this crisis and provide real, concrete support to schools and teachers in these demanding and unpredictable circumstances. In this way, during this period, the return of part of the state funds was also possible – says Greganić, explaining that the old Chinese symbol for the concept of crisis consists of two ideograms and means both danger and opportunity.

Along with the dangers to business that the pandemic brought, it also opened up opportunities for them. During the quarantine, they offered their system of digital educational materials and textbooks for free to Croatian teachers, and they also marketed the digital educational platform to companies in Bulgaria, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, and Germany. They also participated in the process of digitizing textbooks for the first grade of elementary school in Montenegro. However, during the same period, the company began operational and financial restructuring. They started implementing a new systematization and business strategy; the challenging business circumstances forced them to reduce the number of employees and suspend incentives, bonuses, severance pay, and other benefits.

Operational business brought practical but also ethical dilemmas, for example, should the entire sales-promotion process be shifted to other channels, how to organize the work of promoters, should they be sent to the field under the new conditions or not?

Others faced similar dilemmas as numerous decisions had to be made, such as: Reduce salaries or lay off employees? Apply for state support for job preservation or not, because there are those in worse positions? Pay dividends or preserve precious reserves for a problematic autumn? Pay bonuses and severance pay to employees or show solidarity with those who cannot? Raise prices of the most sought-after products and earn extra for salaries or miss the opportunity and be ‘irresponsible’ to employees, but responsible to society? Revoke remote work and demand a return to work or allow each employee to choose for themselves because it is, after all, about their health?

What ethical challenges has the coronavirus posed to the business world and how have Croatian companies coped? Read in the new edition of digital and printed Lider.

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