Institutionalization of a Code of Ethics and the Politics of the Protestant Work Ethic

Abstract

In Business Ethics texts we learn that common values not only unite the stakeholders and facilitate Human Resource Management, but also unify the collective of an organization. A code of conduct provides a guide for accepted standards and business principles efficiently when it is institutionalized. An institutionalized code of conduct — as is seen in the Shell Group’s case — provides a moral guideline on how to live according to Shell’s general business principles.²³⁰ Viewed from a sociological perspective as well as from the perspective of political philosophy, an institutionalized moral guideline on how to live according to business principles might be interpreted as life politics (Anthony Giddens) and ideology (Louis Dumont) (see Section 2.1.1 and 2.1.2). But for now I would like to refrain from an incorporation of these terms into this analysis on institutionalization of ethics, since the terms of life politics and ideology need a special introduction. In this section it is sufficient to show the relationship between the Protestant work ethic and the institutionalization of codes of ethics, which is the result of evolutionary development of Business Ethics.