The site that I chose to review was www.business-ethics.com. The originally a magazine named ‘Business Ethics’ that was launched back in 1987, the magazine is now available only online as a comprehensive guide to current issues and developments related to business ethics, corporate governance and corporate social responsibility. In addition to these main topics, the site offers articles, expert opinion and analysis on several categories such as Leadership, Sustainability, Environment, Regulation & Legislation as well as a separate section for recent updates and business ethics related stories that have made the news.
I visited most of these categories and found that some of them had particularly large number of articles when compared to others. This could be an indicator of the topics that are most popularly viewed and hence need a more comprehensive coverage. I also noticed that several articles were repeated across multiple categories. This made the site slightly repetitive, giving a sense of limited content. Each category listed also contained a relevant multiple choice ‘poll’ question that visitors could answer. This was a nice touch as it gave the website a more interactive feel. The main page or landing page of the website contained a ‘scroll bar’, a block which provided headlines and links to the latest articles across categories. It also provided a separate section which featured a list of ‘most viewed’ stories and new articles. I found this to be a useful feature as, to a certain extent, it shows what visitors of the site are most interested in reading about and hence gives an insight to the current mindset of the business community.
I was a little surprised at first that the section did not provide any explanation of what each category constituted and how it forms a part of business ethics. However, considering that this is an online magazine and not an information website, it seems reasonable that the creators have not included descriptions for each category covered by the magazine. The magazine also came across as being targeted at the business community more and less for laymen or students, which no special efforts being made to make articles easy to understand. The magazine seemingly expects its readers to know at least the basics of business ethics. For those who have studied the subject of business ethics or have some knowhow of its constituents, then the Business Ethics online magazine can be prove be highly informative.
I focused my research on the Corporate Social Responsibility or CSR section of the website. The category contained a total of 128 articles, all of which were available for viewing. This would, however, require a lot of scrolling as the articles were listed by date. No sub-category or ‘tag’ were available to filter all the articles, which is a little inconvenient. This section highlighted a ‘featured’ story, which was the latest article available. This was followed by three other recently published articles that were presented in blocks containing images. A further six articles were listed as text links. Hence, the CSR landing page displayed a total of ten recent articles. The articles covered recent new articles from the corporate world, interviews as well as expert opinion on CSR related topics. The articles were well written and contained fresh information. They highlighted the latest CSR thoughts and practices being adopted by companies, which revealed a growing awareness of the importance of having an active CSR strategy as part of the overall business strategy .
Reference
Business Ethics. (2011). What is Slow Money? Retrieved December 12, 2011, from Business Ethics: http://business-ethics.com/category/csr/
