The document discusses Indian ethical practices and corporate governance. It covers ethics in marketing and advertising, human resources management, and corporate governance. For marketing ethics, it outlines guidelines for ethical marketing including being transparent, protecting consumer data, committing to sustainability, responding to consumer concerns, and maximizing benefits while minimizing risks. It also describes unethical practices to avoid such as exaggeration, false comparisons, unverified claims, stereotyping, and exploiting emotions. For human resources, it notes the importance of ethics in areas like compensation, development, and health/safety issues. The document provides an overview of key topics around Indian business ethics.

1. Indian Ethical Practices
and Corporate
Governance
UNIT II
INDIAN
ETHICAL
PRACTICES
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2. Topics
Ethics in Marketing and Advertising, Human Resources
Management, Finance and Accounting, Production, Information
Technology, Copyrights and Patents
Corporate Governance: Concept, Importance, Evolution of
Corporate Governance, Principles of Corporate Governance,
Regulatory Framework of Corporate Governance in India, SEBI
Guidelines and clause 49, Audit Committee, Role of Independent
Directors, Protection of Stake Holders, Changing roles of corporate
Boards.
Elements of Good Corporate Governance, Failure of Corporate
Governance and its consequences
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3. Ethics in Marketing & Advertising
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Image via World Fair Trade Organization
INDIAN ETHICAL PRACTICES

4. Ethical marketing is less of a marketing strategy
and more of a philosophy that informs all
marketing efforts. It seeks to promote honesty,
fairness, and responsibility in all advertising.
Ethics is a notoriously difficult subject because
everyone has subjective judgments about what is
“right” and what is “wrong.”
For this reason, ethical marketing is not a hard
and fast list of rules, but a general set of
guidelines to assist companies as they evaluate
new marketing strategies.
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5. Why is Marketing Ethics Important?
Long-term gains Customer Loyalty Increased credibility
Increased
Leadership qualities
The satisfaction of
basic human wants
and needs
Display of a rich
culture
The attraction of
the right talent at
the right place
Reaching financial
goals
Enhancement of
brand value in the
market
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6. The Five Dos Of Ethical Marketing
 Be Transparent
 Whenever you are marketing a product or service to customers, ensure that
you are fully transparent about it, including key information about its safety
and effective use.
 Protect Consumer Data And Privacy
 Consumers are becoming increasingly concerned about entrusting their
personal data with companies. For this reason, it’s important to emphasise
the company’s commitment to consumer privacy.
 Commit To Sustainability And Human Rights
 Ethical consumerism is becoming a bigger priority for many customers.
People want to feel assured that what they are purchasing is sustainable
and ethically produced. Be honest about your ingredients, product
components, and your supply chain.
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7.  Respond Meaningfully To Consumer Concerns
 If customers have safety concerns about a product or
service, then this should be seen as a company’s top priority.
Always seek to protect consumer rights and immediately
investigate any complaint.
 Maximise Benefits And Minimise Risks
 Every ethical marketing strategy should try to benefit as
many people as possible while creating as little harm or cost
as possible. Making an overall and lasting positive impact
should always be the aim.
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8. The Five Don’ts Of Ethical Marketing
 Don’t Exaggerate
 When you exaggerate the benefits of a product or service, you are making
a false claim. You are promising a customer a level of quality that cannot be
delivered.
 Don’t Make False Comparisons
 This is an unscrupulous tactic that involves making false, inaccurate, or
misleading statements about a competitor’s products.
 Don’t Make Unverified Claims
 This involves promising to deliver results (e.g. improved skin) without
providing any scientific evidence to back this up.

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9.  Don’t Stereotype
 This involves the promotion of stereotypes (e.g. portraying women as sex objects)
in order to sell a product. The harm here is that this sort of marketing helps to
maintain a sexist culture.
 Don’t Exploit Emotions
 Getting an emotional reaction from consumers is one of the most effective ways
generate interest. However, if you evoke negative emotions such as rage, fear,
sadness in a tasteless way, this could be seen as exploitative. Customers want
emotions to be sympathised with, not manipulated.
 Examine your current marketing strategy and see how it could be altered in line
with these 10 ethical principles. If you change the planning, implementation, and
monitoring of your strategy with ethics in mind, you will be able to drive success
while maintaining a solid reputation.
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INDIAN ETHICAL PRACTICES

10.  Ethical marketing refers to the process by which
companies market their goods and services by focusing
not only on how their products benefit customers, but
also how they benefit socially responsible or
environmental causes.
 https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/09/20/ethi
cal-marketing
 https://www.marketing-schools.org/types-of-
marketing/black-hat-marketing/#section-0
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INDIAN ETHICAL PRACTICES

11.  Advertising is a method for correspondence with
the clients of an item or administration.
 Commercials are messages paid for by the
individuals who send them and are planned to
educate or impact individuals who get them, as
characterized by the Advertising Association of the
UK.
 Currently, advertising utilizes each potential media
to get its message through.
 It does this by means of TV, print (papers,
magazines, diaries and so on), radio, press, web,
direct selling, hoardings, mailers, challenges,
sponsorships, notices, garments, occasions, hues,
sounds, visuals and even endorsements.
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INDIAN ETHICAL PRACTICES

12. The advertising industry consists of companies that are hired by companies who want to advertise their
product and often asked to make advertisements that directs the viewer’s attention to the advertisement
and in return of humongous money charged these advertisers add some “MAGIC MASALA” to the
product which sometimes affects the sale of the no demanded product resulting in demand from zero to
infinity.
Sometimes these advertisements are directed to a specific group such as children or some peer groups.
Some unethical practices are often followed by advertisers like adding unnecessary claims to a specific
product.
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13. Types of
Unethical
Advertising
Surrogate Advertising – In certain places there are laws
against advertising products like cigarettes or alcohol.
Surrogate advertising finds ways to remind consumers of
these products without referencing them directly.
Exaggeration – Some advertisers use false claims about a
a product’s quality or popularity. A Slogan like “get
coverage everywhere on earth” advertises features that
cannot be delivered.
Puffery – When an advertiser relies on subjective rather
than objective claims, they are puffing up their products.
Statements like “the best tasting coffee” cannot be
confirmed objectively.
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14. Unverified Claims – Many products promise to deliver results
without providing any scientific evidence. Shampoo commercials
that promise stronger, shinier hair do so without telling consumers
why or how.
Stereotyping Women – Women in advertising have often been
portrayed as sex objects or domestic servants. This type of
advertising traffics in negative stereotypes and contributes to a
sexist culture.
False brand comparisons – Any time a company makes false or
misleading claims about their competitors they are spreading
misinformation.
Children in advertising – Children consume huge amounts of
advertising without being able to evaluate it objectively. Exploiting
this innocence is one of the most common unethical marketing
practices.
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15. Guidelines
By ASCI
 The Advertising Standards Council
of India (ASCI), a body that brings
together advertisers, ad agencies
and the media, has drawn up a
detailed and elaborates code on
the Code of the Advertising
Standards Council of India is
listed below in four chapters.
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16.  Chapter 1
 The promotions must be honest. All portrayal, cases
and examinations identified with issues of unbiasedly
ascertainable certainty ought to be fit for
substantiation and they are required to deliver such
substantiation as and when required to create by
commercials must not twist actualities or misdirect the
consumers by methods for suggestions or oversights,
promotions will not be allowed to contain any case
so overstated as to prompt grave dissatisfaction
psyches of consumers.
 Chapter 2
 To guarantee that promotions are not offensive to for
the most part acknowledged guidelines to open
fairness, commercials will contain nothing profane,
obscene or terrible to cause grave or far-reaching
offence.
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17.  Chapter 3
 No commercials will be allowed
which will, in general, impel
individuals to wrongdoing, issue,
viciousness or prejudice and
partitions any race, position,
shading, ideology or nationality and
antagonistically influences well-
disposed relations with a remote
state, promotions routed to kids will
not contain anything in outline or
something else, which may result in
their physical, mental or moral
mischief or which abuses their
powerlessness, Advertisements
ought to contain nothing in
contravention of law.
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18.  Chapter 4
 Notices containing correlations with
different makers or provider or with the items,
including those where a contender is named
are admissible in light of a legitimate concern
for lively challenge and open edification with
viewpoint, topic of items and no consumers
will be deluded because of such examination,
Advertisements must not utilize the name or
initials of some other firm, organization or
establishment, nor take image of another firm
and its items, Advertisements shall not be so
like different promotions when all is said
in done design, duplicate, trademarks,
visual introduction, music or audio cues as to
probably misdirect or befuddle consumers.
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19. ETHICS IN
HRM
 Human resource management deals with
manpower planning and development
related activities in an organization.
 Arguably it is that branch of management
where ethics really matter, since it concerns
human issues specially those of
compensation, development, industrial
relations and health and safety issues.
There is however sufficient disagreement
from various quarters.
 https://youtu.be/YAgLSJxJNFw?t=30
 https://www.shrm.org/about-
shrm/pages/code-of-ethics.aspx
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21. References
 https://www.marketing-schools.org/types-of-marketing/ethical-
marketing/#section-4
 https://www.marketing-schools.org/types-of-marketing/black-hat-
marketing/#section-0
 https://www.marketing91.com/marketing-ethics/
 https://figarodigital.co.uk/article/10-principles-of-ethical-marketing/
 https://www.managementstudyguide.com/ethics-in-human-resource-
management.htm
 https://www.shrm.org/about-shrm/pages/code-of-ethics.aspx
 https://www.tutorialspoint.com/business_ethics/business_ethics_hrm.ht
m
 https://www.cornerstoneondemand.com/resources/how-tos/ethics-
human-resources-6-guidelines-hr-teams/
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