Code of ethics and strategic positioning

Strategic positioning is about the way that a whole company is placed in its environment as opposed to the operational level, which considers the individual parts of the organisation.

Ethical reputation and practice can be a key part of environmental ‘fit’, along with other strategic issues such as generic strategy, quality and product range.

The ‘fit’ enables the company to more fully meet the expectations, needs and demands of its relevant stakeholders. The ‘quality’ of the strategic ‘fit’ is one of the major determinants of business performance and so is vital to the success of the business.

The company can carefully manoeuvre itself to have the strategic position of being the highest ethical performer locally and can win orders on that basis. The strategic position as being the ethical ‘benchmark’ in its industry locally is a competitive advantage.

The ethical principles are highly internalised in the company generally, which is essential for effective strategic implementation.