The Institutionalisation of Business Ethics: Are New Zealand Organisations Doing Enough?

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper reports the results of a survey investigating the institutionalisation of business ethics among New Zealand's top 200 organisations. A majority of the respondents indicated that steps were being taken by their organisation to incorporate ethical values into daily operations. However, fewer than a quarter of those surveyed indicated that resources were being set aside to accomplish the objective. The most popular tech-nique for institutionalising ethics was the development of a code of ethics. Training in ethics, ethics officers, and ethics committees were not in common use amongst the companies surveyed. Furthermore, very few organisations indicated that ethical behaviour was specifically rewarded. In contrast, a clear majority indicated that they punished unethical actions and made use of disciplinary processes to regulate employee behaviour. Follow-up interviews with a sample of managers from the organisations surveyed high-lighted a preference for the use of informal processes for the institutionalisation of business ethics.