Ethics and Socially Responsive Business

Intro. To Business: Ethics and Socially Responsive Business[pic 1]

Ethics and Socially Responsive Business

The Cheesecake Factory is a restaurant company and a distributor of cheesecakes in the United states and some Middle East countries. The company was founded in Beverly Hills, California in 1978. The Cheesecake Factory operates over 180 restaurants Nationwide and about seven in Middle East. As you can tell this company is expanding to other parts of the world. No matter how massive the company becomes, it will always maintain its code of ethical conduct. The code of ethical conduct are a set of principles and standards that a business believes in, statements and more specific practices, policies about conduct to give employees, allies and outsiders/customers an idea of what the company stands for and how the employees should follow the it’s core principles themselves .

The cheesecake Factory has established codes of ethical conduct that is an imperative factor in maintaining a standard balance in the human aspect of ethics. The Cheesecake Factory. has two documents of the company’s values and rules of conduct. “The Code of Ethics and Code of Business Conduct” is a document that applies to all company employees, affiliates, subsidiaries and members of the Board of Directors. There is one more document named the “Code of Ethics for Executive Officers, Senior Financial Officers and Directors” which applies to all the respective employees of the company.

Despite all aspects of the Cheesecake Factory’s code of ethical conduct is crucial for the success of the company, there are a few key aspects of the company’s code of ethical conduct that are of significantly important for the Cheesecake Factory. One of those key aspect is in the “Conflicts of Interest” article IV, which is regarding investments and transaction. This portion(Conflicts of Interest) of the code is a legal agreement which is essential for the functioning of the company, as well as for the financial well-being and reputation. The code of conduct also describes when conflicts of interests might potentially transpire. the situations with potential conflicts of interest might have an impact on the relationships with business partners, stakeholders, financial position or reputation. Another key area in Article V “Prohibition Against “Insider Trading” of the company’s code of ethical conduct. In this section the code  outlaw insider trading, it states that, “An officer or director shall observe the Company’s policy prohibiting trading on the basis of material, non-public information.”

There are few key steps The Cheesecake Factory, can adapt to in order to assure the employees follow the (ethical)code of conduct. One step is having the employees sign the code of ethics document, in the process of being hired. This way the employee will understand how important the reputation of the restaurant is. An alternative step to assure the employees follow the code of conduct is to include a customer/compliance service department to handle complications,disputes, violation(s) concerning the code of conduct and etc. The employees must be aware of these things from the start. This makes it possible for the employees and the company to be on the same level.