Giving as Good as They Get? Organisation and Employee Expectations of Ethical Business Practice

Abstract

Research is needed to unlock the mysteries of ethical culture and investigate the ways in which it impacts on employees (Collier and Esteban, 2007). Our paper responds to this call. Its focus on codes of ethics recognizes the increasing importance of the topic (Svensson et al., 2006) – and the benefit of viewing employee communication through a stakeholder lens (Uusi-Rauva and Nurkka, 2010). We investigate the link between ethical context and important work outcomes with codes representing organization espousal of a desired ethical stance. We then show how employee cognizance and evaluation of this stance results in specific attitudes and behaviors (Weaver and Trevino 1999). CSR discourse is primarily concerned with the propensity for organizations to conform to or subvert ethical norms and codes within and – in the case of transnational business – across cultural contexts (Burchell and Cook, 2006, Kallio, 2007). This prompts researchers to examine influences within organizations that encourage positive (or negative) responses to CSR. Prior analysis of CSR has tended to focus on the role of senior management and the mediation of related power influences via corporate governance mechanisms (Aguilera et al., 2006). However, relatively under-explored areas within corporate governance and CSR include the fair treatment of workers and environmental degradation (Robertson and Athanassiou, 2009) – and we examine the former in this paper.

Keywords: Ethical Business Practice, CSR, Employee Ethics