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This study aims to investigate whether firms involved in a major corruption scandal, with broad ramifications across several emerging and advanced markets, design the content of their corporate codes of conduct to either improve corporate ethical standards and practices or merely manipulate the impression of stakeholders.

This study adopts an impression management perspective. It uses content analysis techniques to examine the codes of conduct adopted by seven Brazilian engineering and construction multinationals accused of corruption. The analysis covered five major themes: (1) forms of corruption, (2) values or principles, (3) interested parties, (4) procedures and routines and (5) punitive action.

The study provides detailed evidence that the codes of conduct adopted by these firms are mere artifices that aimed at meeting legal requirements but do not target the relevant corporate audience involved in grand corruption. At best, such a code may impede petty and bureaucratic corruption.

This research contributes to improving the understanding of how Latin American multinationals adopted codes of conduct after a major scandal and how they failed—at least to some extent—to design codes complying with established corporate governance principles. It shows that management manipulated the impression of stakeholders by selectively adopting or omitting certain terms, examining or concealing various issues and addressing mainly petty crimes rather than grand corruption. It also identifies areas where Western ethical values conflict with established practices and cultural norms in Latin America.

Supplier codes of conduct are amongst the most widely used practices in sustainable procurement programs. While there are limitations and risks involved in using supplier codes of conduct (including the risk of greenwashing, a weak link to action and the inability of supplier to comply), there is only a modest amount of research on the topic, other than content analysis. We aim to contribute to research both lessons learned, over a two-decade period, about the implementation and use of a supplier code of conduct from a case study, as well as, to suggest further research that can support the industry and enrich insight into the effective adoption of supply codes of conduct.

Thanks to the support of our co-author from Bayer we are able to share lessons learned by the global procurement team of Bayer and use these as a basis for suggesting questions for further research. The approach of this paper centres on the adoption and implementation of the supplier code of conduct in an effort to complement existing research on supplier codes of conduct that is largely focused on code of conduct content, less on the implementation of codes of conduct. The collaboration with our co-author from Bayer enables direct access to experiences and managerial perspectives. By considering the two-decade journey towards more sustainable supply chain management at Bayer, we are able to achieve a longitudinal perspective on adoption and implementation aspects.

Bayer ensures personal and community engagement in its sustainable procurement program in order to drive action and improve decision making along the value chains. The company regularly updates its code of conduct to stay aligned with its maturity and complements the code of conduct with a continuous improvement focus, supported by both generic and industry-specific consortia. The company has not yet been able to establish direct visibility into the conduct of tier 2 and up suppliers.

This paper helps close a gap in the literature and provides input into industry efforts in one of the most widely used practices in sustainable procurement. We hope that the research questions that we developed based on the first 20+ years of Bayer’s learning journey towards sustainable procurement will inspire research that can impact industry efforts towards creating a more sustainable future.

Drawing from fraud triangle theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine whether the use of internal control systems and codes of conduct, as a specific element of internal control, helps firms to reduce law violations and bribery payments to public officials.

The study is based on survey data of Vietnamese firms, conducted between September and December 2018. The authors run logistic and ordinary least squares regressions to test the hypotheses.

The study showed that the use of internal control systems has a negative and significant relationship with law violation but not with bribes paid to public officials. By contrast, the use of codes of conduct appears to reduce bribe payments but not law violations.

Cross-sectional data do not allow us to confirm causal relationships. The self-reported measures of the use of codes of conduct and internal control systems may suffer from social desirability biases and should be further validated with different samples of firms. Finally, the relatively modest number of firms that participated in the survey raises a concern of sample representativeness.

For businesses, the application of codes of conduct and internal control systems enhances the reliability and certainty of the firm's operations as well as its integrity, contributing to the firm's long-term development. For policymakers, encouraging businesses to use internal control systems and codes of conduct would contribute meaningfully to the anti-corruption effort.

Businesses in emerging economies face a dilemma of how to participate in an anti-corruption agenda while staying profitable. This study shows that the use of internal control systems and codes of conduct would serve both purposes, contributing to businesses' sustainable development.

This paper aims to avail a soft approach to embracing the process of creating a business code of conduct and ethics and make it work for a pharmaceutical company [player] which wants to remain relevant before stakeholders and society, amidst escalating inducements to go against the acceptable pharmaceutical behaviour.

Data collection was guided by qualitative methodologies. A four stepwise process was followed: data collection at the case company – Kampala Pharmaceutical Industries (KPI), Uganda; validation of data collected at KPI; data collection from external stakeholders of KPI; and re-validation of KPI data based on data collected from external stakeholders. In all this, combination of semi-structured and informal interviews with CEOs, senior staff managers, non-participant observation of ethical related activities plus organizing a stakeholder engagement workshop on business code of conduct and ethics was achieved. This workshop helped document what ought to be an ideal design process to secure stakeholder buy-in of the code of business ethics. A local pharmaceutical company in Uganda, KPI was used, which, for continuous five years since its adoption of the business code of conduct and ethics, registered commercial viability without any record of unethical practices. Triangulation was used to ensure credibility and validity of the results. For data analysis, a three-stepwise process was followed, which helped develop a framework within which the collected data revealed themes which were later analyzed. For generalization of the findings, the “adaptive theory approach” was used.

When poorly introduced in an organization, the business code of conduct and ethics can work against the company simply because it will be received with “intentional rebellion” from stakeholders, notably staff. However, when a soft stakeholder engagement and consultative approach is used and followed during the business code of ethics and conduct’s design process, multiple stakeholders feel proud and are much willing to live by the promise spelt out in it. Cited notable benefits of living by the code include reputational enhancement, strategic competitiveness and increased possibilities of wining cross-border cooperation among like-minded pharmaceutical players. In the efforts to reap from the code of ethics, communication was observed as an indispensable activity. Refresher trainings to remind the stakeholders about the promises in the code are also needed as time passes by, otherwise they forget. Needless to say, rewarding those who live an exemplary life in embracing and living by the code was cited as key in sustaining the ethical agenda. Lastly, managing multiple stakeholders influences is a curvilinear fashion and involves back and forth consultations.

The lessons learnt from KPI can be borrowed and used by both global pharmaceutical players and national/local players, especially those that face challenges living by the promise of their existing codes or those without business code of conduct and ethics. That is, both players can use the suggested process to help participants in their medicine supply chain to come up with working business codes of conduct, as well as guide the stakeholder consultative process which results in stakeholder buy-in.

For many years, issues surrounding bioethics have dominated priorities of World Health Organization (WHO), UNESCO and many international and national development allies. However, there is an escalating violation of medical codes of conduct and ethics. Hence, this publication is a step toward the implementation of the principles and objectives of the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights which is currently challenged with a difficult question posed by life sciences – How far can we go given the dented medical relationship between ethics, medical science and freedom?

Following the example of Anglo‐Saxon companies, French companies are increasingly establishing codes of conduct specific to the use of information and communication technologies (ICT). A review of literature reveals that such codes have multiple goals, such as improving efficiency of use, IS security awareness, and ethics. This paper aims to identify organizational factors influencing the adoption and diffusion of a formal code of conduct.

A survey was administered to 505 companies. In order to highlight the emerging nature of this practice, the study was conducted in similar conditions for two consecutive years (2002 and 2003).

Results indicate that though still marginal, the adoption of ICT codes of conduct concerns an increasing number of companies. This practice is related to the degree of standardization, technological context (the degree of virtualization and the strategic importance placed on ICT by the management) and size of the organization. However, the adoption of ICT codes of conduct is not associated with specific industry sectors and nationalities.

The study was conducted in France and a generalization of the results to other countries may be questionable.

The paper deals with a topic that has received little attention to date. The contribution of this paper is two‐fold: a previously unperformed review of research involving ICT codes of conduct, and empirical results describing the organizational factors of an ICT code of conduct diffusion. It allows a better understanding of this emerging IS management practice.

Most workplace health promotion efforts have failed to consistently and sustainably encourage employees to take responsibility for their health. The purpose of this paper is to explore a potentially high-impact solution – Health Codes of Conduct – for engaging and motivating employees to assume responsibility for their health.

This mixed methods study draws on interview and survey methodology with a sample of 149 working adults to examine the feasibility of Health Codes of Conduct. Descriptive and inferential statistics are calculated to understand reactions, characteristics of the companies likely to support the idea, and components of a Health Code of Conduct.

Nearly all employees offered moderate to high support for Health Codes of Conduct; this included overweight but not obese employees. Additionally, all demographic groups either moderately or strongly supported the policy when they included either monetary incentives (such as prescription discounts) or often overlooked non-monetary incentives (such as employee recognition). Some of the more popular features of Health Codes of Conduct included annual physical exams, exercise routines, and simply being encouraged to stay home when ill.

Health Codes of Conduct offer a surprisingly well-supported potential solution. Favorable reactions were observed across all examined segments of workers, even overweight (but not obese) employees. Using the specific features of Health Codes identified here, visionary companies can tailor their company’s Health Code of Conduct with the appropriate monetary and non-monetary incentives and disincentives.

What if the workplace could be a positive source of health and empowerment for valued employees? The authors show employee Health Codes of Conduct could be this empowering, engaging solution that has been missing.

This paper is the first to propose the concept Health Codes of Conduct and solicit feedback from employees on this novel idea. Furthermore, the authors identify both the monetary and non-monetary incentives and disincentives that employees believe would be most compelling.

This paper seeks to identify the practical challenges of implementing a code of conduct in the supply chain management of multinational mobile phone industries from diverse cultural and legal contexts by analysing critically how a multinational company manages the CSR concept in its supply chain.

This study is based on qualitative interviews, analysis of codes of conduct and the practices of Sony Ericsson as well as of one of its suppliers.

Codes of conduct should be perceived differently within different contexts. Therefore, cultural and legal issues have to be considered when formulating and implementing codes of conduct, and when assessing compliance. The development of codes of conduct in the mobile phone industry is an ongoing process. Both cultural and legal challenges have to be considered.

Each company should define its own standards and limits of responsibility within the context of ethical sourcing, while some basic codes of conduct compliance should be forced on the whole mobile phone industry.

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, the influence of competitive compensation systems on employee risk taking has gained increasing attention. As the renouncement of such incentive schemes might entail severe disadvantages regarding employee motivation, standard setters have proposed adding nonmonetary instruments of control. This paper aims to examine the influence of two of the most common instruments: a risk-sensitizing code of conduct and justification.

A laboratory experiment with 136 business students is conducted to test the hypotheses and answer the research question. The presence and absence of a risk-sensitizing code of conduct and a justification system is manipulated between subjects. The experiment consists of ten rounds, with round as the third factor manipulated within subjects.

Consistent with the paper’s hypothesis and the underlying theory, both instruments are found to offset higher risk taking. The paper shows that the motivation of individuals triggered by justification depends on a risk-sensitizing code of conduct, and insights into the psychological mechanisms behind the findings are provided.

As justification is considered more costly than a risk-sensitizing code of conduct, establishing the latter instead of the former seems preferable in most situations. However, if organizational citizenship behavior is unlikely to evolve, justification can substitute it for managing employee risk taking.

This paper identifies the risk-sensitizing code of conduct as an informal instrument of control for managing risk taking. Prior research mainly focuses on potentially more costly formal instruments of control.

The transfer of organizational practices or management instruments in the multinational firm often requires adaptations to the local context of subsidiaries and is, as such, revealing cultural and institutional particularities. Among the multinational firm’s management instruments, the codes of conduct are closely linked to the values and standards of conduct of the parent company. Being instruments of North American origin, codes of conduct were, in the last 20 years, gradually institutionalized first in North American multinational companies and then more frequently in European multinational companies. Several studies showed the difficulties of implementing these instruments in countries as diverse as France, Germany, Israel and China and stressed the importance of coherence between values, local organizational practices and acceptability of codes by employees of the subsidiaries. The purpose of this paper is to study the specificity of the Lebanese context from a new perspective by showing whether codes of conduct were adapted and by explaining the reasons of these adaptations. This research also highlights the differences between American and European multinational companies regarding the transfer of their codes of conduct.

The study used a multiple case study approach. Interviews were conducted in ten Lebanese subsidiaries of multinational companies, four of North American origin and six of European origin.

The study showed adaptations done to transferred codes of conduct in Lebanese subsidiaries. The study also reveals differences between American and European MNCs.

The study sheds light on host-country factors explaining the adaptation of codes of conducts transferred to Lebanese subsidiaries.

The purpose of this paper is to carry out empirical testing of the relationship between corporate image and corporate satisfaction among business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce organizations who possess codes of conduct and study their effects on sales volume. The aim is to measure impacts of both corporate image as well as measure corporate satisfaction on online sales volume increases. In addition, the authors have added to the study the product-type dimension as a moderate variable.

A structural model is developed and empirically tested through survey data obtained from 127 Spanish companies adhering to a code of conduct.

The results indicate that adhering to a code of conduct has a positive impact on the increase in sales volumes. The paper identified the main reasons for adhering to a code of conduct, such as offering greater trust to potential consumers as well as improving the firm’s image, prestige and increasing quality and security.

Further variables must be identified that would help to determine the impact on organizations adhering to codes of conduct.

This paper highlights how B2C e-commerce codes of conduct help managers achieve better conditions for competiveness. The findings show how adhering to a code of conduct has a positive impact on increased sales volumes. The results indicate that the reasons for adhering to a code of conduct are the following: it offers greater trust to potential consumers, as well as improves the firm’s image and prestige, and increases purchase quality and security.

This paper contributes to the enrichment of knowledge concerning B2C e-commerce codes of conduct developed a pioneering study.