Code of Ethics: A Stratified Vehicle for Compliance

Business Ethics: A European Review, 2008

While most large companies around the world now have a code of ethics, reported ethical malpractice among some of these does not appear to be abating. The reasons for this are explored, using academic studies, survey reports as well as insights gained from the Institute of Business Ethics' work with large corporations. These indicate that there is a gap between the existence of explicit ethical values and principles, often expressed in the form of a code, and the attitudes and behaviour of the organisation. The paper suggests that two basic reasons appear to be at the heart of the problem: ineffective ethics programmes and deficiencies in corporate culture. The paper concludes that successfully embedded corporate ethical values requires well-designed ethics policies, sustained ethical leadership and incorporation of ethics in organisational processes and strategy as part of an ethical culture at all levels of the organisation. It makes some practical suggestions on how this can be achieved.

Journal of Business Ethics, 2007

This paper takes its point of departure in an article by Stevens [Stevens, B.: 1994, Journal of Business Ethics 54, 163-171], in which she identified a lack of knowledge regarding how corporate codes of ethics are communicated and affect behavior in organizations. Taking heed of this suggested gap, we review studies on corporate codes of ethics with an empirical content, published since 1994. The conclusion of the review is that we still lack knowledge on how codes work, how they are communicated and how they are transformed inside organizations. Stevens' plea could even be extended, arguing that the knowledge gap might be of even more significance than in the mid-1990s. Some directions for how this situation can be approached in future studies are outlined in the paper.

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Business and Management , 2021

This book chapter provides an overview of how the academic literature on corporate ethics codes and practices has developed across time and space. Our emphasis is on charting this development in a global context. Specifically, we review the academic literature over the last three decades and organize our core findings into three main sections: (1) Evolution in the content of corporate codes of ethics across time and space, (2) evolution in the practice of corporate codes of ethics across time and space and (3) global translation of codes of ethics. We note that while the practice of adopting corporate code of ethics has continued to develop globally, there is a lop-sided emphasis in academic literature focused on codes of ethics in developed nations. Given the persistent prevalence of corporate misconduct despite the adoption of such codes, we identify some important themes and key research questions for guiding future research in the field.

Australian Journal of Management, 1996

Codes of ethics are attracting more interest in Australian business corporations. They have often been used simply to garnish the public image, or to remind employees of the law. However, they can fulfil a more important educational role in the corporation in shaping and maintaining corporate culture. They also can translate into instruments to achieve volitional and creative compliance, and in turn have a direct impact on transaction costs in the corporation.

Despite millions of dollars being deployed to few studies have been able to effectively address and measure the effectiveness of codes of ethics in reducing misbehavior. In this article, we propose to evaluate what information codes can highlight in terms of deeper ethical structures of organizations. We suggest that codes of ethics can be separated into two different contents: a legal approach, based on rational decision-making and mainly focused on the institutional legal framework, and a behavioral approach takes onboard insights from the behavioral ethics literature. To evaluate both the codes' structure and development empirically, we decided to use Fortune 500's public companies dataset. Our results show that, via cluster analysis, three main code categories emerged: legalistic codes, behavioral codes, and paper codes -which have low proportions of both legal and behavioral content, . Also, by evaluating the relationship between code effectiveness and content, we found that companies with higher behavioral content had a better compliance effectiveness system when measured as risk behavior. However, behavioral content fared worse when measured against the risk of class action litigations. We believe that our results may shed light on how to improve compliance policies better and how to build guidelines that effectively consider how key stakeholders effectively make ethical decisions. By structuring compliance guidelines that take into consideration the particularities of each organization, we will be one step closer to foster and create truly ethical organizations.

Journal of Business Ethics

This paper presents a review of 100 empirical papers studying corporate codes of ethics (CCEs) in business organizations from the time period mid-2005 until mid-2016, following approximately an 11-year time period after the previous review of the literature. The reviewed papers are broadly categorized as content-oriented, output-oriented, or transformation-oriented. The review sheds light on empirical focus, context, questions addressed, methods, findings and theory. The findings are discussed in terms of the three categories as well as the aggregate, stock of empirical CCE studies in comparison with previous reviews, answering the question “where are we now?” Content and output studies still stand for the majority of the studies, whereas the transformation studies are fewer. Within these areas, two new trends are found to have emerged: discursive analyses and a focus on labor conditions. The review finds that (a) the content of CCEs is still predominantly self-defensive, (b) that C...

2021

Although recognized as a key factor for its effectiveness, the adopted process for the development of a global corporate code of ethics, is one of the least documented aspects by Academia. The code is often created at central level and then sent for adoption and implementation to the different branches within the organisation, and the fact that they are not involved in the development process, frequently elicits resistance and compromises effectiveness. This was initially the case with the company of this study, where it was found that business units from different geographical locations had gradually made adaptations to the original code of the Group, which no longer remained the same across countries, neither in text nor in form, which led to the code review. Developed through an action-research methodology, this case study describes the review process which included 30 people from all the Group companies. All defined goals have been achieved. The different companies’ representati...

Organization Studies, 2010

This study is about how a corporate code of ethics travels into a multinational corporation's subsidiary, focusing on how members of the subsidiary recontextualize, relabel and explain the code (to themselves and others). What emerges is the story of a code that is disliked by its receivers, but yet signed by them all, avowing that they have 'read, understood and accepted' it, thereby reinforcing the parent's control system. We argue that this seeming contradiction can be explained in terms of the receivers resisting the code by distancing themselves from it through the devaluation of (i) social referents, (ii) the code's core ethical content and (iii) the expected outcome of implementing the code. These distancing practices enable the receivers to position themselves as outside of power, which, in turn, enable them to sign the code.

Organization, 2009

What happens when corporate codes of ethics (CCEs) 'go to work', and how do they infl uence moral practice? Even though previous research has posed these or similar questions, the role and the effect of the CCE are still dubious. In this article, it is argued that this is predominantly because previous research is fi xed in a position in which CCEs are passive artefacts with no capability of bending space, and in which agency and morality are limited to the human sphere only. An approach to the study and understanding of CCEs in which the travel of the CCE is made the focus of the research is therefore developed. The code comes alive in a heterogeneous materiality, travelling as a result of a wide range of translations, and granted an epistemological capability of infl uencing humans' world-views and moral practices. The approach is illustrated with a case study on CCE-implementation and it is concluded that through generating more accounts like this, researchers and practitioners are not only in a better position to understand how CCEs 'go to work', but also in a better position to shoulder moral responsibility.

2012