The need for ethical consideration in innovation practises in co-operatives

Abstract

It has been established that there is a need for co-operatives to consider ethics in the innovation practices. Ethics establishes the levels of honesty, empathy, trustworthiness and other virtues by which we hope to identify our personal behaviour and our public reputation. This paper has explained the co-operative's main function as to process the products from its members and then sell them to the customers. In so doing officers or employees within this sector are required to consider ethical aspects in order to meet stakeholders’ expectations. It has been discussed that ethics in philosophical perspectives possess questions such as how, then, should we behave? From philosophy, three different perspectives help us assess whether our decisions are ethical on the basis of reason. These perspectives are called normative ethical theories that focus on how people ought to behave. Few philosophers have been discussed as reference. In the world of business, there are many different types of innovation that a co-operative might pursue. In academia, we’ve all heard the phrase “publish or perish”. In innovation we have to “adapt or die” and for businesses to achieve success in today’s modern world, this is a universal truth. Co-operatives pursue innovation in order to take advantage of new opportunities as well as to counter threats. However, co-operatives face a number of challenges in terms of professionalism, generating ideas, as well as selecting and funding innovation projects.