Ethics in The Business Environment – Ethical Code of Conduct Plan

Ethics in the Business Environment

Proto Labs will continue supporting all its stakeholders to conduct themselves ethically when serving it. Especially, Proto Labs will continue requiring, supporting, and encouraging the stakeholders to act honestly and morally. The company will always encourage understandable, timely, precise, fair, and full disclosures among the stakeholders. It remains committed to complying with every applicable government rule, public regulation, and law. Each of the stakeholders is obligated to remain ethical to protect each of the company’s lawful business interests, including the interests related to confidential information, assets, and corporate opportunities (Gostick & Telford, 2003). All Proto Labs’ stakeholders, including directors, vendors, and employees are obligated to have a thorough understanding of its code of ethics and comply with the procedures and principles that the code sets forth.

Legal Regulations Governing Proto Labs’ Business Overseas

            Proto Labs shall adhere to every legal provisions set forth by the WTO (World Trade Organization) and the related legal instruments to guide international business always. Notably, the WTO, which has nation-state governments as its members, controls trade at the international level. Originally, it was founded by 123 nation-states on the 1995 Marrakesh Agreement. The agreement replaced the earlier GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade). The WTO is charged with the control, or regulation, of how its member-states trade with each other (Arjomandy, 2013).

If affords the member-states a legal framework or platform for resolving trade-related disputes and consulting with the aim of formulating trade agreements.  The WTO’s principal office is located in Geneva. The office and the other WTO’s offices oversee the WTO covered multilateral agreements’ implementation, operation as well as administration. As well, they administer an international mechanism for reviewing international trade policies.

 Proto Labs’ Vendor and Employee Ethical Code of Conduct

1. Ethical and Honest Conduct Policy

Each vendor and employee of Proto Labs is under obligation to it to carry out assigned tasks with truthfulness, or integrity. Integrity needs one to be ethical as well as honest. Each vendor and employee shall handle apparent, as well as actual, conflicts or contradictions between his or her professional interests and individual interests ethically. Notably, subordination and deceit are in conflict with truthfulness (Gellerman, 2003).  Each vendor and employee ought to act truthfully when handling the company’s information; adhere to the spirit along with form of all the applicable organizational standards, government regulations along with rules, and organizational policies; and express high business ethics standards always.

1. Conflicts between Professional Interests and Individual Interests Policy

Proto Labs operates from the basis of the thinking that conflicts will always appear when the individual interests of the company’s vendors and employees interfere or come off as interfering with the company’s interests. Such conflicts make interfere with the capacities of the vendors and employees to wok effectively as well as objectively. As such, the company obligates each of its vendors and employees not to confer improper personal benefits stemming any of the company’s transactions to any of own family members. Each vendors and employee shall disclose all of his or her interests in the company’s competitors, as well as suppliers, to this directors’ board (Gostick & Telford, 2003). No vendor or employee shall subordinate his service and loyalty to the company to her or his individual advantage or gain.

1. Disclosure Policy 

Each Proto Labs vendor or employee is obligated to familiarize with all the applicable disclosure procedures and controls of the company. Besides, each vendor or employee mandated to file any document on behalf of the company shall consult constantly with the relevant officers of the company on the proper steps to follow. All the disclosures made by the company’s vendors or employees shall be understandable, precise, fair, timely as well as full. Every person is prohibited from misrepresenting facts regarding Proto Labs, its operations, and partnerships to any party on purpose.

1. Corporate Opportunities Policy

Each Proto Labs vendor or employee is barred from directing or taking the company’s commercial opportunities that are made out using its corporate position, information or property without its express and written approval. Generally, each Proto Labs vendor or employee is barred from utilizing the company’s corporate position, information or property in pursuit of individual gain or in furthering competition against it. Each Proto Labs vendor or employee intending to utilize the company’s services or property in ways that do not benefit it exclusively must consult with its legal office beforehand (Gellerman, 2003).

Guidelines for Complying with ADA, Civil Rights and EEOC Laws

Proto Labs is committed to complying with every applicable law, including the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), civil rights and EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) laws. Each of the company’s directors, vendors, and employees is individually responsible for adhering to the restrictions and standards set forth by the laws. In accordance with the EEOC law, each of the company’s directors, vendors, and employees is barred from practices that may be construed as constituting workplace discrimination. Notably, the EEOC is charged with administering, as well as enforcing, legal instruments against the discrimination (Keeney, 2012).

The company bars each of its stakeholders from engaging in discriminative acts informed by considerations of friends, family, genetic information, sex, religion, race, age, color, nationality or disability. As well, the company will safeguard the stakeholders’ rights as guaranteed by the Civil Rights Act’s Title VII. Notably, the present mandate of the EEOC includes the upholding of the Title VII rights.

Ethics Training

Proto Labs will facilitate the regular training of its stakeholders on ethics. Especially, the trainings will be geared towards increasing the stakeholders’ capacities for making out wrong from right and establishing when particular acts are lawful (Gostick & Telford, 2003). The ethics office of the company shall be developing the content to be used in the training, which will be done online. Each of the stakeholders shall acquire a social media account dedicated to the training through which he or she shall get and send the related correspondence.

Particularly, the regular training shall focus on making the stakeholders aware of the reality that legal and moral conducts are not mere issues of character. Rather, they are issues relating to the formulation of decisions. The stakeholders shall be assisted to appreciate individual character as developing through series of decisions over time. Via the training, the stakeholders shall be expected to have sufficient capacity for making suitable ethical decisions for the success of the company. The trainers shall not adopt a legalistic approach. Notably, the approach supposes that all what is allowed by the extant law is ethical and proper. The trainers shall adopt an approach that does not consider laws as exclusively establishing and articulating ethical principles.

Making Out the Concerns Typifying the Motivation to Engage In Illegal or Unethical Business Operations

            Proto Labs will facilitate the regular auditing of the reasons why any of its stakeholders may engage in unethical or unlawful practices regardless of the corresponding consequences. The ethical audits of the company shall be executed by independent and objective parties working under structured confidentially contracts. The audits shall focus on various aspects, including the justifications that any of the stakeholders may have in considering given actions appropriate if they are not straightforwardly defined as immoral or unlawful (Gostick & Telford, 2003). As well, the audits shall zero in on the instances where any stakeholders may engage in immoral or unlawful actions based on the thinking that they are in the company’s best interests.

Monopoly and Oligopoly Marketplace Ethical Responsibilities

Each monopoly or oligopoly has varied ethical responsibilities in its market. Especially, the responsibilities help oligopolies and monopolies succeed via honest commercial competition. Notably, the two engender imperfect competition. A monopoly serves a particular market exclusively and manufactures products that are devoid of close substitutes. There are considerable impediments against the entry of other firms into the market. The monopoly has a high product price regime since it lacks competitors.

In any given market, an oligopoly comprises of a few firms manufacturing, as well as offering, comparable products. As well, there are considerable impediments against the entry of other businesses into the market. Unlike a monopoly, each of the firms constituting an oligopoly has a moderate product price regime since it has competitors. Even, the regime is lower than it would be in a market defined by perfect competition.

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