The importance of ethics and moral values of management and business etiqette in tourism
Managers in tourism and other tourism-related organizations often need to know more than
they have gained through formal education or what they have learned in the family. Particularly
important are rules of good manners, in order to meet needs the clients or guests in
the best way. Also, the tourism manager should have a number of characteristics such as
kindness, resourcefulness, intelligence, persistence, initiative, earnestness, honesty, benevolence.
However, the manager should first of all be a man/woman of high moral values, i.e.
he/she should have knowledge how to handle the various situations in which he/she can
come to. The manager has another important role-a role of a model, i.e. a manager is the person
employees look up to and the person who is a model for the employees.
The main characteristics of business ethics refer to personal respect, mutual respect and
trust, respecting diversity, overcoming differences and respecting others’ interests, protection
of dignity, responsibility and duty to the others, helping each other, keeping promises
and given words, respecting good business customs and intentions, business compromise,
humanity. Without these characteristics neither manager, nor organization can
hope for success. In addition to moral personality traits, characteristics of business ethics
are expressed also through the possession of intellectual abilities that enable rapid inclusion
and rapid adaptation to changes, the authority that is most easily acquired through honest
and fair treatment of its associates, through the energy, ambition, flexibility, creativity,
imagination, optimism and communication skills. Business ethics obliges all participants in
the business, especially managers. Managers should be moral persons with developed and
adopted internal feeling that is particularly true of moral responsibility. In addition to education
and a sense for management, the manager should also have a distinct sense of interpersonal
relations, ability to comprehend and understand the social (and natural) environment,
to know the psychology of behaviour, mentality, ethical standards and moral systems, value
systems, in the spirit of the times which it operates.
The main new values or principles of moral conduct in business relations should be based
on the principles of ethical humanism. Business ethics should, as a general unwritten set of
ethical norms and values which defines professional conduct at all times, be based on the
dignity and autonomy of all participants in the business process, the freedom of choice that a
person could follow his/her business instinct as long as he/she does not endanger other participants
in business relationships, which is important because of the diversity of value and
business systems.
In addition to respect for diversity, for business ethics is important to define ethics of
excellence and business standards such as creativity, rationality, self-selection, ability, fairness,
honesty, adaptability to the situation, keeping promises, fair business cooperation.
It is important to increase the level of their own business responsibility and accountability
to business partners, respect the needs and interests of others, to act humanely in every business
contact, bring back to business life moral responsibility, moral virtue and moral conduct.