Ethics in business. Is this company is ethical or unethical?

Grab Holdings Inc. , commonly known as Grab, is a multinational technology company based in Singapore, now operates in 8 Southeast Asia countries. This also is the developer of Grab- a super app, which provides transportation, food- delivering and digital payments services via a mobile app [1]. Grab overtook their competitor- Uber to become the biggest ride-hailing company in Southeast Asia. What makes Grab stands out from its competitors can be the company’s ethics: “Grab was founded on the belief that a technology company could both run profitably and create sustainable impact. As we continue to innovate and serve our communities, we seek to ensure that our profitability is tied to the welfare of the communities we operate in, and the protection of the environment for future generations to come. ” [2] Therefore, in order to stay true to what they claimed, the company has some strategies for both their customers and their partners. Grab employs people with different genders, ages and social classes; offers employees both hard skills and soft skills training. They prepare helmets, raincoats, products with sun protection for customers who book their services. They have the best customer service. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg, the company still had a few controversial choices, which were considered unethical. But first, what is ethics? Ethics can be explained as the system of what is morally right and what is not. It is one of the most necessary parts of business. Ethics helps set standards and better relationships between employers and employees, between companies and customers. Nowadays, customers care about the company’s ethics more than ever. A company being unethical may strongly affect its reputation, furthermore its profits. Many times, customers choose not to buy a product just because they do not agree with that company’s ethics. For these reasons, every company should take ethics into consideration. One of the debatable decisions from Grab was to add surcharges for heatwave starting from July 6th 2022 in Vietnam [3]. These surcharges of an extra VND5, 000 (US$0. 21) per ride and VND3, 000 ($0. 13) on each delivery order were directly added into the order price. This left many costumers outrageous. The reason for this was that the company did not give enough information about when exactly the additional fees were charge. One of them commented: “What can be considered ‘extremely hot’? I think every day in Saigon is really hot, so does this mean the prices go up every day, too? I use GrabBike to and from work daily, so I can feel how much this would impact my budget for transportation in the long run. ” [4] As a result, customers switched from choosing Grab to using services provided by their direct competitors with more promising prices. Moreover, what triggered netizens the most was that riders did not receive these extra fees at all, in other words, the company was the only one who was beneficial from this. Some drivers complained about the situation because they had not obtained other previous surcharges of heavy rain, long waits, traffic jams and night trips even before this. In the end, the employees chose to go on strike. This was considered an unethical decision of the company since they did not live up to what they had promised. Soon, after just a few days of pressure from customers, partners and even the authority had made Grab quickly call off these non-sense surcharges. Now imagine if Grab had decided to keep charging the fees in the long run, would they have been cancelled and would no one have ever booked from them again? Probably not. But without doubt they would have lost a significant number of customers. From the case of the giant Grab, it can be seen how crucial ethics can be to a business. On a final note, every firm from small businesses to international corporations should STAY ETHICAL.