Thursday 20th February 2020
Alex Adler- investment Analyst
In today’s seminar, the guest speak was Alex, who works for Arrow Global Group plc, which is a leading European investment and assets management company. Alex proudly hold a Master of Arts (MA) in economics, from the University of Edinburgh and a masters in economics from the University of Amsterdam. In the first few years of his degree, Alex worked in the public sector before moving to the private sector, where he is now employed as an investment analyst.
He started the seminar with an interactive session and asking what we would consider the definition of ethics. Taking in everyone thoughts and ideas we come up with our very own definition for ethics. He then went on to explain how ethics and business are combined and work together, and stimulated our brains asking questions, for instance; what is ethics? Is the company I want to work for ethical? Am I ethical? Questions that basically we wouldn't get asked or have to answer on a daily basis. Ethics of a company is unique to them and there's no real right and wrong answer, so it’s actually then up to you to judge the company's ethics.
Alex then, by using examples, explained the differences between morals and ethics, and how morals are individual's interpretation of what is right and what is wrong. Ethics however, is a set of rules set by a company or organisation and then it’s up to you to decide if you agree with them or not. To embed an ethical value system into a business, it is upon the business to train the employees to abide by the company's values.
Alex educated us on the situation in 2016, whereby the new sugar tax come into action, and how Coco Cola opposed to this change, and would rather agree to pay the fine and keep their original recipe. On the other hand, every other company like Irn Bru, went onto changing their recipe and ingredients all together. The controversy with the sugar tax, got people to support them and oppose them. Some people stated that the sugar tax doesn't actually work and is a money-making scheme for the government, whereas other people said that reducing sugars helps with the ever-raising obesity population (Whitehead et al., 2016).
Alex then went onto wrapping the session up with proving to all of us the real definition of ethics and you won’t all agree because everyone's ethics is different and opinionated, but this doesn't mean that one's right and the other person is wrong. Every person believes in something different, and that’s what makes us all unique from one another.
Reference
Whitehead, R., Watson, E., Chu, W., Michail, N. and Arthur, R., 2016. 2016: The Year Of The Sugar Tax. [online] beveragedaily.com. Available at: <https://www.beveragedaily.com/Article/2016/12/15/2016-The-year-of-the-sugar-tax#> [Accessed 19 March 2020].
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