Content area
Full Text
ABSTRACT. Codes of ethics are being increasingly adopted in organizations worldwide, yet their effects on employee perceptions and behavior have not been thoroughly addressed. This study used a sample of 613 management accountants drawn from the United States to study the relationship between corporate and professional codes of ethics and employee attitudes and behaviors. The presence of corporate codes of ethics was associated with less perceived wrongdoing in organizations, but not with an increased propensity to report observed unethical behavior. Further, organizations that adopted formal codes of ethics exhibited value orientations that went beyond financial performance to include responsibility to the commonweal. In contrast to corporate codes of ethics, professional codes of ethical conduct had no influence on perceived wrongdoing in organization nor these codes affect the propensity to report observed unethical activities.
KEY WORDS: codes of ethics, organizational values, wrongdoing
A growing interest in codes of ethics in organizations is evident over the past few decades. Research on this topic is characterized by several themes representing distinct lines of inquiry. One central theme concerns the characteristics of effective codes of ethics in terms of promoting ethical behavior in organizations. Individual studies have been both normative and empirical. Normative work has provided excellent guidelines for practitioners faced with the tasks of developing and implementing codes of ethics (e.g., Murphy, 1995) while empirical work has focused on the properties of existing codes (e.g., Montoya and Richard, 1994). A second theme which has emerged in studies of codes of ethics is their prevalence; that is, the extent to which ethical codes have been adopted and implemented in specific countries (e.g., White and Montgomery, 1980) or industries (e.g., Berenbeim, 1992). Results, to date, indicate that about three quarters of American firms have adopted formal codes of ethics with the percentage of "adopters" rising steadily over the past two decades (e.g., Fulmer, 1969; White and Montgomery, 1980). Finally, an emergent theme within this general domain concerns the influence of codes of ethics on employee behavior in organizations.
Of these three themes, the behavioral element appears to be the least researched topic area with considerably fewer studies addressing the influence of ethical codes on employee behaviors and attitudes (Cassell et al., 1997). Studying the behavioral and contextual elements of...