Corporate Blog

-Contributed by Kanak Dutta, Knowledge Buddy

Business ethics set the standard for how your business is conducted. They define the value system of how you operate in the marketplace and within your business. With legal scandals concerning insider trading and employee theft making the news, it is no wonder that businesses are increasingly giving attention to the ethical basis of their business and how to lead in an ethical way. While the examples above seem to be clear-cut breaches of ethics, many ethical dilemmas that are not so clear-cut are faced on a daily basis in business. In fact, there may not even be a “right” or “wrong” answer to the dilemma, but how you deal with it will says much about you and your business.

These decisions are often referred to as being in the “gray” area. They are not black-or-white, but could be argued appropriately either way.

Importance of Business Ethics in your company
There are definite advantages to owning your own business when you want to establish an ethics policy. Basically ethics come from the top. Without setting an example at the top, it is often difficult, if not impossible, to convince your employees that they too should be ethical in their business dealings. A well-defined ethics policy along with an outline of related standards of conduct provides the framework for ethical, moral behavior within your company.
What is the benefit of developing such a policy, you may be wondering. The benefit is higher employee morale and commitment that in most cases leads to higher profits. But higher profits should not be your motivating factor in defining your ethics policy.

-Contributed by Veera Mavalwala

Day 1 of the World SME Conference organized by Milagrow Business & Knowledge Solutions kicked off on 12 December 2008 with a simple ceremony of Release of Milagrow Study “State of India MSMEs 2008” by Dr Jagdish Sheth, Charles H Kellstadt Professor of Marketing in the Goizueta Business School at Emory University, followed by an inaugural address by the Founder Director Mr Rajeev Karwal welcoming the august gathering of Speakers – from India and overseas - Government officials, media and a hall full of delegates from all over India. During the day other Milagrow Studies were released -“Government backed initiatives and the progress of MSMEs in India” and “Women Entrepreneurs of MSME Clusters in Hyderabad – How Women bettered Men”,

The Emcee then introduced the first Speaker of the Day, Mr Pravir Kumar, Jt Secretary, Ministry of MSME. He was bombarded with questions, which he tried to answer in a diplomatic way. He apprised the audience on the steps being taken by the Ministry to help the MSMEs in the country. The Media thronged him after his talk to get ‘bites’ for their TV and newspapers.

Mr V Vaidyanathan, Executive Director, ICICI Bank then gave a bank’s perspective of “Winning in difficult Times” – he explained how the bank functions in these difficult and “Rocking Times”. He too had to answer a lot of difficult questions which the media and audience wanted answers for.

With some humor the Emcee introduced the next Speaker of the morning, Mr Guriqbal Singh Jaiya, Director SMEs from WIPO Geneva, who gave his views on intellectual property and how this can be used as a sustainable competitive tool by the MSMEs.

-Contributed by Tapan Bhatnagar

The Milagrow World SME Conference concluded successfully on the 13th of December 2008. The conference was a tremendous success, and I'm not shooting off the cuff here. The success of the conference is measurable in terms of the number of speakers, number of delegates, Press attendance, number of Partners, profitability, number of press ads etc.

The conference to an outsider would look like Mission Impossible part I - II - III combined, but here at Milagrow, as with any other projects, we are strivers. The conference was properly conceived and though we were on a road less travelled, we were sure of the positiveness of the outcome. The idea was conceived almost a year back with basically two ideas:

I. Bring Global MSMEs on a common platform to interact with each other as well as with industry captains and govt officials to interact and understand the challenges faced by the MSME ecosystem.

II. Take a leap as an authority in the MSME space in India

Based on these ideas, the development of the conference began. This started with creation of the compilation of the ideas and output we expected to achieve from the conference and what was our plan to achieve the same. Mind you, at this point in time, Milagrow was just a young organisation - less than 1 year old! But, the difference between Milagrow and any other organization is that we dream big and then strive to achieve that dream.