Building a Good Business Foundation
What Builds a Good Business Foundation
Most people know that the foundation of every good business should involve a solid business plan; however, not everyone realizes that part of that foundation should consist of a good ethics program as well. When Mountain View Management Services was created, the goal was to provide nonprofit organizations with top quality management consulting services. Due to the fact that the clientele of Mountain View Management Services consists entirely of nonprofits, and therefore the funds for those nonprofits will consist of grants or donations from a variety of sensitive and exclusive sources, Mountain View Management Services needs to ensure that its foundation is solid at all levels. In addition to having a good business plan in place, the people they employ have to be completely on board and aligned with the mission and values of Mountain View Management Services. From policies and procedures to people and products, every tool that Mountain View Management Services uses has to be of the utmost quality. “The same types of management tools that make a company run successfully also need to be used to make sure it runs legally and ethically” (Murphy, 2010).
Code of Ethics and Core Values
Creating a solid ethics program involves more than just throwing together a list of policies and procedures and hoping that people will stick to them. As stated by Melinda Burrows (2005), “Ethics programs must be embraced, applied and reinforced from the top down…” Before an ethics program can be embraced, the core of that ethics program needs to be put into writing. A good initial approach to this involves creating a Code of Ethics and a statement of Core Values. A summarized version of the Code of Ethics (the “Code”) and Core Values (the “Values”) that Mountain View Management Services has drafted is summarized below.
Code of Ethics
The success of Mountain View Management Services is determined by the trust, confidence and respect we
Most people know that the foundation of every good business should involve a solid business plan; however, not everyone realizes that part of that foundation should consist of a good ethics program as well. When Mountain View Management Services was created, the goal was to provide nonprofit organizations with top quality management consulting services. Due to the fact that the clientele of Mountain View Management Services consists entirely of nonprofits, and therefore the funds for those nonprofits will consist of grants or donations from a variety of sensitive and exclusive sources, Mountain View Management Services needs to ensure that its foundation is solid at all levels. In addition to having a good business plan in place, the people they employ have to be completely on board and aligned with the mission and values of Mountain View Management Services. From policies and procedures to people and products, every tool that Mountain View Management Services uses has to be of the utmost quality. “The same types of management tools that make a company run successfully also need to be used to make sure it runs legally and ethically” (Murphy, 2010).
Code of Ethics and Core Values
Creating a solid ethics program involves more than just throwing together a list of policies and procedures and hoping that people will stick to them. As stated by Melinda Burrows (2005), “Ethics programs must be embraced, applied and reinforced from the top down…” Before an ethics program can be embraced, the core of that ethics program needs to be put into writing. A good initial approach to this involves creating a Code of Ethics and a statement of Core Values. A summarized version of the Code of Ethics (the “Code”) and Core Values (the “Values”) that Mountain View Management Services has drafted is summarized below.
Code of Ethics
The success of Mountain View Management Services is determined by the trust, confidence and respect we
References: Burrows, M. (2005). Staying Alive: Creating an Effective Compliance and Ethics Program to Prevent and Detect Employee Misconduct. Retrieved from http://apps.americanbar.org/ labor/lel-aba-annual/papers/2005/009.pdf. Murphy, J. E. (2010, August). A Compliance Program on a Dollar a Day: How Small Companies Can Have Effective Programs. Retrieved from http://www.hcca-info.org/Portals/0/PDFs/ Resources/Resource/Overview/CEProgramDollarADay-Murphy.pdf.