 Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem and Asalaamu Alaykum Pakistan, we are back with Corporate Governance and now we are going to start off a very interesting, a very introspecting and a very spectacular module and that chapter is on challenges of ethics and ethical living in the corporate world. Ladies and gentlemen, when we talk about corporate governance, just like we were mentioning earlier on in our sessions that the foundation or the very platform on which the pillars of corporate governance tend to rise and then create an umbrella for the betterment of society, for the betterment of corporations, for the betterment of communities and for the betterment of the whole world that is ethics. Now ladies and gentlemen, today we are going to be talking about business ethics which is a component of the whole larger module which will actually encapsulate about twenty different interesting sessions and I would like to advise all of you that you should be honed on to the sessions on the challenges of ethical living and ethical consideration because if you comprehend these twenty sessions, then you would be able to understand all the aspects of corporate governance not only in Pakistan but also around the world. So if we look at what is business ethics, so let us have a look at that and see what it tends to encapsulate and also tends to interpret. So ladies and gentlemen, when we are looking at ethics, ethics is a conception of right and wrong behavior, defining when actions are moral and when immoral, business ethics is the application of general ethical ideas to business behavior. So ladies and gentlemen, when we talk about ethics, there are millions of interpretations. We can talk about religious ethics, we can talk about societal ethics, we can talk about traditional ethics, we can talk about institutional ethics, we can talk about public ethics, we can talk about social ethics, there are so many different dimensions and perceptions of ethics but today we are talking about business ethics. Now fundamentally when we are looking at ethics, it is the study of morality and when we are looking at morality which we are going to look at in more depth, we are actually talking about the difference between right and wrong, correct and incorrect, good and bad, moral and immoral. So that is the general understanding, the do's and the don'ts, what should be done and what should not be done. So that forms the very basis on which we will try to understand in the corporate world what is correct and what is incorrect, what is moral and what is immoral and what constitutes all of that. Why is it that even knowing that we should not be doing something as human beings we tend to do those wrong things, we know collectively that we should not be delving upon certain aspects of behavior but we have that collective behavior. Now why is that so? Why do organizations go on the wrong path? Why do organizations go into the realm of corruption? These are the different questions which we are going to be answering today and in our next 19 sessions inshallah. So looking a little bit forward and we see that business ethics is the art and discipline of applying ethical principles to examine and solve complex moral dilemmas. Business ethics is the set of principles or reasons which should govern the conduct of business whether at the individual or collective level. So just like I was mentioning ladies and gentlemen that when we are talking about business ethics it is about what should be done and what should not be done. Why is it done at an individual level? Why is it done collectively? All of these different aspects I mean for example as a human being we know that we should not lie, why do we lie? We know that it is incorrect. As a human being we know that we should not be corrupt. Why is it that there is so much corruption all around us? As a human being we know that my freedom ends where your freedom begins and that basically means that there is a transparent line in which we are trying to move ourselves ahead and that basically again means that we should not encroach upon the freedom of someone else. My freedom does not mean that I can do whatever I want to do and I can hurt people, I can damage people, I can do whatever I want at the cost of someone else. So not at all. What morality is is that I can be free but without abusing, manipulating, exploiting, damaging or disconfiguring anyone or anyone's life that is extremely important on an individual level and the same thing collectively ladies and gentlemen also applies on a collective level and again we see that organizations like I mentioned earlier like Enron, like Tricom like the different episodes which have happened around the world and also in Pakistan why do those organizations keep on doing things which are not considered to be right? Only recently we had this example of Eden Housing Society and we saw its implications and also its repercussions. Why do people do that? Why can't we abstain from that? Why is it that we want to have shortcut? Why is it that our desire that our needs for self-aggrandizement do not have any limitations? Why can't we be self-disciplined? There are so many questions. So actually ethics more than answers is about question. Questioning what we are doing, why are we doing it, how we are doing it, when we are doing it and what we should not do. That is extremely important ladies and gentlemen. So when we are looking at that, so let's look at the different problems which exist, the ethical problems in business. The first one is just like I was mentioning self-aggrandizement or self-contrace of a few. So those people with power or authority they start abusing that power or authority and in that they start compromising on their actions, on their policies and also on their performance and their results. They can be competitive pressures on profits. We talk about maximization of profit. We talk about optimization of profit. Now for that when we want to maximize then we are compromising on many values. We are compromising on what should not be done and therefore we tend to delve into the black arenas which are actually prohibited and that again is a compromise on business ethics. The other one is the clash of personal values and business close. This is a paradox and sometimes it also becomes a contradiction and I'll just give you an example. For example, I have a certain set of values and I have a certain set of dos and don't but my organization is compelling me. So as an individual, maybe I don't want to be corrupt. As an individual, I do not want to lie. As an individual, I don't want to do illegal thing. But if I am working in an organization, then as an institutional employee, I am compelled sometimes to lie. I am compelled sometimes to give bribes to people. I am compelled to compromise on quality standard. I am compelled to do things which are illegal. I am compelled to not save on tax but I am compelled not to give tax. Why is all of this happening? So then we have this clash, the clash between individual and institutional values. Individual and institutional morality and that creates that dilemma and that paradox which many a times can be debilitating individually and collectively. There can be cross-cultural contradictions in global business operations. So what is practiced in Pakistan might not be practiced in the UK and what is practiced in the UK might not be practiced in South Africa and what is practiced in South Africa might not be practiced in Japan like in our previous session, we talked about the Japanese model which is the Karatsu model and we talked about the German model in which we basically see that the elite few are given more preference than the majority of the minority stakeholders. So again, things are done in different ways. What is done in one particular society would not be done in the other and therefore there would be a difference. So alcohol is prohibited in Pakistan but it is allowed in the western world and in the western world you would celebrate any performance with alcohol but in Pakistan you would not be doing that. So there are different ethical considerations based upon the different regions or societies that one tends to exist in. Critical solutions to business problems may have one or more answers and sometimes no right answer at all and logical and ethical reasoning are tested in that particular business situation. So again, ladies and gentlemen, it is very important to understand that many a times we have many options and we have this confusion which would be the best option forward and sometimes we would be in such a situation where there would be no option available at all, where there would be no precedent, where we would be going into uncharted territory especially nowadays in the domain of information technology, in the domain of ICT, in the domain of computer and mobile applications. There is so much of terrain that we are traversing which has not been done before and therefore many new challenges of the dark web come up, many new challenges of intellectual property rights come up, many new challenges of what should be done or not be done, questions on intellectual property, a very very important development which has taken place in the past two years is COVID, should we be vaccinated, should we not be vaccinated, what type of vaccines are applicable, which vaccine is good or not good, how much efficacy does a vaccine have, what are the implications of a particular vaccine on ourselves and our future generation, what is going to emerge in the coming days when new types of variants emerge from the fundamental COVID-19 variant and all of that improbability leads to so many questions again which do not have answers, should we move towards virtual education or should we vaccinate all of our children and what would be the implications of all of that, so all of these difficult decisions at a corporate, at a national and institutional level are setting new standards and also challenging institutions that what should they do when they are moving into an arena which they have never treaded before and these are the challenges for the 21st century ladies and gentlemen, we have challenges of climate, we have challenges of environment, we have challenges of water, we have challenges of food, so the very basic challenges are now emerging and we do not understand how we should proceed forward and therefore that basically again becomes a very fundamental on which we have to, we have to conduct a lot of research and we have to understand that prudent decision making is extremely important in the coming decades of this particular century for all corporations and businesses and again corrective action and the ability to be resilient and the ability to conform and the ability to ensure that we move forward in a better way is what business ethics is all about, so ladies and gentlemen, a business or company is considered to be ethical only if it tries to reach a trade off between pursuing its economic objectives and its social obligation, so this is another, this is another dilemma that we are facing, should we achieve all of our objectives of business which would fundamentally be governed by optimization of profit or do we have social obligation, do we have to ensure that we do not damage the climate or the environment, are we contributing to global warming or are we ensuring that we would set certain standards which would stop global warming, all of these are different questions which are emerging, business ethics is based on the principle of integrity and fairness and concentrates on the benefits to its stakeholders both internal and external, so again it's not only about the institution, it is about the internal stakeholders and the external stakeholders and it becomes extremely important that we do a stakeholder analysis and understand that our decisions are going to have implications for everyone, not only in the organization, in the community, at a regional level, at a national level and also at a global level, the world is in our palms and therefore every decision that we take has its own implications and as a business and corporation we have to ensure that those decisions do not encroach or entrench upon anyone else and the better good and the greater good of society tends to emerge, so just like I was mentioning that these different aspects of decision making have various levels of implications and most importantly its application on the four aspects of business, the first one being planning, how do we plan for today, tomorrow and the decades ahead, how do we lead, how is it that we are creating ambassadors of good and ambassadors of governance and ambassadors of profitability, how are we doing all of that, how are we bridging the experience with the new leadership and then how do we tend to organize ourselves, what are the implications of that organization and then controlling all of that and ensuring that we are meeting certain standards, certain expectations and most importantly that in all of that controlling we ensure that we do not cross the line of immorality and the line of doing things in the wrong way, we try to remain within the domains of ethical consideration and move ahead as an exemplary organization and that is the very crux of business ethics, thank you so much everyone.