Businesses ignoring ethics, governance, says entrepreneur

By DALE LUMA
MANY Papua New Guinean-owned businesses are ignoring ethics and governance, says a businessman.
Speaking during the small to medium enterprises (SME) business magazine’s Business Growth seminar yesterday, Arthur Sam, a managing partner of a local accounting firm, said ethics and governance was one of the less appreciated but critical areas of business when starting out.
“You’ve got to have some intention to build in ethics and governance structures to achieve long-term success,” Sam said.
“Too many Papua New Guinean-owned businesses ignore this subject.”
Sam said an example of ethics and governance was in terms of pricing or how much a business could charge a client or customer.
“Is your price fair for the amount of effort you will put in and for what the client or customer is expecting?,” he said.
“The country suffers from a lack of judgment and ethics in many respects such as the poor quality of goods and services and in the wider PNG sector and ecosystem.
“Businesses will be far stronger and better if everyone followed ethical principles and practiced discipline.”
Sam said a poor product would have a flow-on effect through the value chain and entire systems of the business value chain and procurement would be riddled with questions.
He said SMEs needed to have a basic business plan that fell under governance in order to ethically operate.
“When business don’t have a plan, then the questions of ethics creeps up and unethical behaviour is very likely,” he said.