This article outlines an approach for implementing business ethics. A company should both organize for ethical business policies and execute them. The organizational dimension refers to structural components including codes of ethics, conferences and training programs and an ethical audit. The corporate culture must support these structural elements with top management playing a central role in implementing ethics. The execution of ethical business policies includes implementation responsibilities and tasks. These responsibilities are leadership in ethics, delegation, communication and motivation of the (...) company's ethical position to employees. Execution tasks are delineated for the marketing function. Although many company examples are provided, a program in place at McDonnell Douglas is highlighted as a model of ethics implementation. (shrink)

A model is developed which identifies and describes various factors which affect ethical and unethical behavior in organizations, including a decision-maker's social, government and legal, work, professional and personal environments. The effect of individual decision maker attributes on the decision process is also discussed. The model links these influences with ethical and unethical behavior via the mediating structure of the individual's decision-making process.

A longitudinal survey of business graduates over a four-year period revealed stability over time in their assessments of proposals to improve business ethics except for significantly greater disapproval of government regulation. A comparison of graduates and executives indicate both favor developing general ethical business principles, business ethics courses, and codes of ethics, while disapproving government regulation and participation by religious leaders in ethical norms for business. The mean rankings by business graduates over time of factors influencing ethical conduct show significant (...) declines in school-university training and significant increases for religious training and industry practices. Graduates and executives rank family training as the most important influence and school-university training as least important. The authors conclude that a more careful consideration be given to matching reform proposals and influence factors, and to increasing the depth of change efforts in individual business ethics. (shrink)

Employed professionals (e.g., accountants or engineers)-and those who study them-sometimes claim that their status as employeesdenies them the “autonomy” necessary to be “true professionals.” Is this a conceptual claim or an empirical claim? How might it be proved or disproved? This paper draws on recent work on autonomy to try to answer these questions. In the course of doing that, it identifies three literatures concerned with autonomy and suggests an approach bringing them together in a way likely to be useful (...) both to philosophers interested in the concept and to social scientists interested in studying autonomy in the workplace. (shrink)

Codes of conduct are viewed here as a community’s attempt to communicate its expectations and standards of ethical behavior. Many organizations are implementing codes, but empirical support for the relationship between such codes and employee conduct is lacking. We investigated the long term effects of a collegiate honor code experience as well as the effects of corporate ethics codes on unethical behavior in the workplace by surveying alumni from an honor code and a non-honor code college who now work in (...) business. We found that self-reported unethical behavior was lower for respondents who work in an organization with a corporate code of conduct and was inversely associated with corporate code implementation strength and embeddedness. Self-reported unethical behavior was also influenced by the interaction of a collegiate honor code experience and corporate code implementation strength. (shrink)

Offers managers new tools to deal with the tough problems businesses face today. Reveals how analyzing the ethical dimensions of problems actually offers competitive advantages. Offers illustrative case examples from internally recognized companies showing that high ethics and high profits go hand in hand--and identifies the factors responsible for these companies' success.

This study investigated several issues with 1498 managers nationwide regarding, for example, how ethical they felt their organizations were and whether their personal principles must be compromised for the organization's sake. In addition their decision criteria for two scenarios involving ethical implications were articulated.

Public accounting in the United States is generally guided by the Code of Professional Conduct of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). It has been suggested that education in understanding and accepting their ethical code would increase accountants' adherence and ethicality.This study was designed to examine the level of consensus to AICPA ethical standards by accounting students (ethical orientation). Situation ethics provided the theoretical rationale for this study.

Despite the importance of the interorganizational nature of the marketing research process, very little research has addressed how research organizations differ and how they affect each other in the conduct of ethical marketing research. The purpose of this study is to examine differences among three typical participants in the research process: corporate research departments, marketing research firms, and data subcontractors. These organizations were examined with respect to having and enforcing internal codes of conduct and the awareness and enforcement of external (...) codes of conduct. By exploring these differences, this study should help marketing researchers better understand the relationships among participants in the research process. Understanding these differences is the first step toward controlling the potential for ethical conflict among research participants. (shrink)

The paper reports the findings of a study of CPAs designed to determine whether they tend to find factors related to their professional environment (especially the guides to professional conduct of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants) to be more helpful than factors related to their business environment when faced with ethics problems. Like internal auditors surveyed earlier, the CPAs tend to view a number of factors in their business environment to be even more helpful than factors related to (...) their professional environment in dealing with ethical dilemmas. Implications for CPAs as individuals and for their professional associations are discussed. (shrink)

The cause of ethical failure in organisations often can be traced to their organisational culture and the failure on the part of the leadership to actively promote ethical ideals and practices. This is true of all types of organisations, including the professions, which in recent years have experienced ongoing ethical problems. The questions naturally arise: what sort of professional culture promotes ethical behaviour? How can it be implemented by a profession and engendered in the individual professional? The answers to these (...) questions are of interest to business ethicists since the causes of ethical problems in business are often the same and the professions, as ethically challenged organisations, make useful and informative analogues for the measures to be adopted or avoided when the attempt is made to raise the ethical standards of business.Given this focus on the professions, it will be argued that the usual, direct attempts to control unethical behaviour by using codes of ethics, legislation and self-regulatory regimes, are not successful. (shrink)

Employed professionals (e.g., accountants or engineers)-and those who study them-sometimes claim that their status as employeesdenies them the “autonomy” necessary to be “true professionals.” Is this a conceptual claim or an empirical claim? How might it be proved or disproved? This paper draws on recent work on autonomy to try to answer these questions. In the course of doing that, it identifies three literatures concerned with autonomy and suggests an approach bringing them together in a way likely to be useful (...) both to philosophers interested in the concept and to social scientists interested in studying autonomy in the workplace. (shrink)

This paper reexamines the perceived ethical issues and roles of employment managers based on their responses to a recent "Ethical Issues in Human Resource Management Survey." This research addresses five major questions including: 1) Whether employment managers' perceptions of the factors influencing unethical behavior vary according to gender, job position, and company size, 2) What are the perceived frequency and seriousness of misconduct among HR functional areas, 3) Whether groups of employment managers (i.e., males and females) vary significantly in their (...) perceptions of the seriousness of unethical events, 4) Whether gender and organizational level influence how often particular ethics roles are played, and 5) What particular roles are being played by employment managers as they respond to ethical dilemmas. The findings show that regardless of gender, position, or company size, employment managers' ethical behavior is influenced most by the behavior of senior managers and their immediate supervisors. In addition, the respondents believe that ethical misconduct occurs more often and is most serious in specialties such as employment, health, safety, and security, and compensation. Gender, industrial category, and company size have a significant impact on how serious unethical practices were perceived to be. Finally, seven of the eight ethics roles were matched with the ethical dilemmas submitted by the survey respondents. (shrink)

The professions have focused considerable attention on developing codes of conduct. Despite their efforts there is considerable controversy regarding the propriety of professional codes of ethics. Many provisions of professional codes seem to exacerbate disputes between the profession and the public rather than providing a framework that satisfies the public''s desire for moral behavior.After examining three professional codes, we divide the provisions of professional codes into those provisions which urge professionals to avoid moral hazard, maintain professional courtesy and serve the (...) public interest. We note that whereas provisions urging the avoidance of moral hazard are uncontroversial, the public is suspicious of provisions protecting professional courtesy. Public interest provisions are controversial when the public and the profession disagree as to what is in the public interest. Based on these observations, we conclude with recommendations regarding the content of professional codes. (shrink)

In a national survey, members of 4As agencies were contrasted with non-member agencies to determine awareness and influence of the 4As Standards of Practice, the Professional Code of Ethics for 4As members. The 4As Code was selected because the 4As represents the principle professional association of the support service industry, advertising.