Abstract
Reports of ethical lapses in the business world have been numerous and widespread. Ethical awareness in business education has received a great deal of attention because of the number and severity of business scandals. Given Sarbanes-Oxley legislation and recent Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International’s (AACSBI) recommendations, this study examined respective websites of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulated public companies and AACSBI-accredited business schools for ethical policy statement content. The analysis was accomplished by classifying ethical expressions into a framework consisting of the attributes of thematic content and focus/themes partially based on the 2004 research of Gaumnitz and Lere. Findings indicate that public companies have been diligent in presenting website ethical content that closely follows authoritative recommendations. Business schools appear not to have prioritized such disclosure to the extent done so by public companies. Although there was improvement between two samples taken in 2005 and 2007, this study provides evidence that many accredited business schools have little or no disclosed ethical expectations in their mission, vision, goals, or other similar types of statements on their websites. Additional findings provide several opportunities for future research.
References
Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International: 2004, Ethics Education Taskforce, Ethics Education in Business Schools. AACSB International, St. Louis, Missouri. www.aacsb.edu/resource_centers/EthicsEdu
Bligh, D., Thomas, H., & McNay, I.“Understanding Higher Education: An Introduction for Parents, Staff, Employers and Students,” Quality Assurance in Education, Vol. 8, Issue 3, 2000, pp. 152-155
Cressey, D. R. and C. A. Moore: 1983, ‹Managerial Values and Corporate Codes of Ethics’, California Management Review 25(4), 53–77
Dobson, J., “Why Ethics Codes don’t Work,” Financial Analyst Journal, November/December 2003, Vo. 59, Issue 6, pp. 29-36
Gaumnitz, B.R. and J.C. Lere, “Contents of Codes of Ethics of Professional Organizations in the United States,” Journal of Business Ethics, January 2002, Vol. 35, Issue 1, pp. 35-50
Gaumnitz, B.R. and J.C. Lere, “A Classification Scheme for Codes of Business Ethics,” Journal of Business Ethics, February 2004, Vol. 49, Issue 4, pp. 329-335
Hasselback, J.: 2004, Accounting Faculty Directory 2005 (Prentice-Hall, NJ), p. iii
Hasselback, J.: 2006, Accounting Faculty Directory 2006–2007 (Prentice-Hall, NJ), p. iii
Hite, R. E., J. A. Bellizzi and C. Fraser: 1988, ‹A Content Analysis of Ethical Policy Statements Regarding Marketing Activities’, Journal of Business Ethics 7, 771–776. doi:10.1007/BF00411024
Jamal, K. and N.E. Bowie, “Theoretical Considerations for a Meaningful Code of Professional Ethics,” Journal of Business Ethics, September 1995, Vol. 14, Issue 9, pp. 703-714
Jennings, M. M.: 1999, ‹What’s Happening in Business Schools’, Public Interest 137, 25–32
Kaptein, M., “Business Codes of Multinational Firms: What do They Say?” Journal of Business Ethics, March 2004, Vol. 50, Issue 1, pp. 13-31
Kaptein, M., & Schwartz, M.“The Effectiveness of Business Codes: A Critical Examination of Existing Studies and the Development of an Integrated Research Model,” Research Institute of Management, RSM Erasmus University, 2007, pp. 1–42
Kaptein, M., & Wempe, J.2002. The Balanced Company: A Theory of Corporate Integrity (Oxford University Press, Oxford)
Kizior, R. J.: 2000, ‹Longitudinal Study on the Effects of Ethics Courses on the Value Systems of Graduate Students’, in Fifth Annual Ethics and Technology Conference, Chicago, IL, July 21–22, 2000. www.ethicstech.org/papers/kizior.doc
Lefebvre, M. and J.B. Singh, “The Content and Focus of Canadian Codes of Ethics,” Journal of Business Ethics, October 1992, Vol. 11, Issue 10, pp. 799-808
Levitt, A. and R. C. Breeden: 2003, ‹Our Ethical Erosion’, Wall Street Journal, New York, N.Y., December 3, 2003, p. A16
Matthews, M. C.: 1987, ‹Codes of Ethics: Organizational Behavior and Misbehavior’, Research in Corporate Social Performance and Policy: Empirical Studies of Business Ethics and Values 9, 107–130
New York Stock Exchange: 2003, Corporate Governance Rules, November 4, 2003
Russell, K. A. and C. S. Smith: 2003, ‹It’s Time for a New Curriculum’, Strategic Finance, December 2003, pp. 47–51
Sankaran, S.: 2003, ‹Relationship Between Student Characteristics and Ethics; Implications for Educators’, Journal of Instructional Psychology, 112–124
Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, 107th Congress, July 2002
Securities and Exchange Commission: 2003, Final Rule Release 33-8177, Disclosure Required by Sections 406 and 407 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, January 23, 2003, pp. 1–60
Shaver, D., “Toward an Analytical Structure for Evaluating the Ethical Content of Decisions by Advertising Professionals,” Journal of Business Ethics, December, 2003, Vol. 48, Issue 3, pp. 291-298
Van Tulder, R., D. Berghe and A. Muller: 2001. Erasmus (S) Coreboard of Core Companies: The World’s Largest Firms and Internationalization. (Rotterdam School of Management, Rotterdam)
Webster: 1990, Webster’s Desk Dictionary of the English Language (Portland House Publishing), p. 307
Wood, L.: 2002, ‹Beyond the Oxymoron: Can Business Ethics Pay?’, The Galt Global Review, May 15, 2002, pp. 1–2
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
McCraw, H., Moffeit, K.S. & O’Malley, J.R. An Analysis of the Ethical Codes of Corporations and Business Schools. J Bus Ethics 87, 1–13 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-008-9865-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-008-9865-2