Thanks big six, you SO prove the business case for ethical practices

Today Ofgen has announced it is referring the "big 6" energy companies for a full investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority. This is basically because there are clear indications that the companies have been operating unethically and without transparency.

Apart from the costs already incurred in terms of Ofgen fines for customer redress e.g. SSE £10.5m and NPower £3.5m in recent years, two of the arguments for good ethical practices in organisations is that:

• without them companies are eventually likely to be on the regulator and politicians' radars.This sector has now become fully politicised and under intense scrutiny. 
• the uncertainty over the next few years as to whether the sector will be broken-up etc now means less confidence and more risk for the investors in the sector.

So basically, if this isn't clear enough, adopting good ethical business practices is cheaper in the long run. Stakeholders: customers, employees and investors etc will have more certain futures, higher levels of satisfaction and the business gets left alone.