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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.

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.

This paper is the first to propose the concept of 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.

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 purpose of this paper is to analyse the contents of ethics codes from Spanish manufacturing companies disclosed on their corporate web sites. The analysis of these contents will reflect the main ethical concerns faced by Spanish organizations in the current business context.

A sample of companies listed on the Madrid Stock Market was used. The initial sample was made up of all the quoted companies. Firms belonging to the finance and insurance sectors were removed, leaving a final population made up of 117 corporations from different sectors. The Pearson's correlations were analysed to detect the sign of the relationships and some non‐parametric tests of mean differences – Mann–Whitney U and Wilcoxon W – were run to validate the statistical significance of the relationship.

The findings stress that the drawing up of codes in Spain is relatively recent and highlight that Spanish codes have received a dual influence. On one hand, they set out responsibilities and principles towards stakeholders and many of them reflect corporate social responsibility, as do many other European codes. On the other hand, their nature is mainly prescriptive and they set out desirable conduct for employees, as many US codes do.

From the analysis, it can be deduced that the main ethical concerns in Spanish corporations have to do with the adherence to law, protection of inside information, search for product quality and good relationships with customers and suppliers, conflicts of interests, the workplace and environmental issues.

This paper is the first study that examines the codes of ethics in Spanish corporations.

Corporate codes of conduct originated around 1900 in the USA gaining further momentum in the 1950s in relation to anti‐trust legislation. Subsequently, the adoption of codes of ethics has spread throughout the world and they now feature extensively in many organisations. The literature relating to codes of ethics, therefore, spans many decades and is undoubtedly comprehensive. The purpose of the paper is to provide an appropriate anthology of codes of ethics.

A descriptive, historical, anthological approach has been taken.

This paper examines the motivations for the adoption of codes of ethics, which naturally also includes international codes, their frequency of use and content. Codes are also not without critique and it is appropriate to highlight the criticisms of codes, to provide an assessment of their potential effectiveness, the issues surrounding implementation and enforcement and the relationship to organisational culture and leadership.

As noted, the literature on codes of conduct is extensive and while effort has been made to capture the key themes the review is not necessarily exhaustive.

The literature is characterised by the means of institutionalising ethics in organisations and the paper concludes with a summative reflection on the key dimensions that appear to be paramount for improving the efficacy of codes of conduct.

This paper aims to analyze the relationships between human resource supply chain management (HRSCM), corporate culture (CC) and the code of business ethics (CBE) in the MENA region.

In this study, the author adopted a quantitative approach through an online Google Form survey for the data-gathering process. All questionnaires were distributed to the manufacturing and service firms that are listed in the Chambers of the Industries of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Egypt in the MENA region using a simple random sampling method. About 567 usable and valid responses were retrieved out of 2,077 for analysis, representing a 27.3% response rate. The sample unit for analysis included all middle- and senior-level managers and employees within manufacturing and service firms. The conceptual model was tested using a hypothesis-testing deductive approach. The findings are based on covariance-based analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM) using PLS-SEM software. The author performed convergent validity and discriminant validity tests, and bootstrapping was also applied.

The empirical results display a significant and positive association between HRSCM and the CBE. The CC and the CBE tend to be positively and significantly related. Therefore, HRSCM can play a key role in boosting and applying the CBE in firms. For achieving the firm purposes, more attention to the HR personnel should be paid to implement the CBE. The high importance of the CBE becomes necessary for both the department and the firm.

Such results can provide insightful information for HR personnel, managers and leaders to encourage them to develop and maintain an effective corporate code of conduct within their organizations.

This paper tries to explore the linkages between HRSCM, CC and CBE in the Middle East region due to the lack of research available that analyzes the relationship between them. Not only that, but it also offers great implications for Middle Eastern businesses.

This study aims to examine and describe ways that organisations in corporate South Africa try to embed ethos of corporate codes of ethics in their organisations.

The study followed a quantitative research approach. The target population was the top 500 companies operating in the corporate sector by revenue. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire from 222 company secretaries and heads/managers responsible for ethics in the companies.

The findings show that the majority of companies have regulations that can help promote ethics ethos. The most prevalent artefact in the area of regulation was found to be conduct of ethical audits. Training was found to be the most prevalent artefact under staff support.

The study was limited to large organisations in South Africa. The findings can thus not be generalised to include small- and medium- sized businesses which make up the largest segment of all businesses in South Africa.

The research provides information that can be used to compare companies operating in different contexts on practices that help promote corporate ethics quality. It provides business managers with information that they can use to evaluate and benchmark their companies on practices that help promote the ethos of corporate codes of ethics.

The study is the first of its kind to examine how organisations go about institutionalising codes of ethics in South Africa. The findings can be used by all sectors of South African business as a point of reference in their efforts aimed at embedding the ethos of ethics in their respective organisations.

Public facilities management (FM) is in the unique position of aligning building projects and FM with the policies of sustainable development at societal level. However, sustainable facilities management (SFM) is an emergent profession, and there is a need to build a code of conduct for SFM in FM organisations. The purpose is to develop and test a workshop based concept for collective building of capabilities targeting in-house FM organisations, in particular public in-house FM organisations.

This research explores the role of public facilities managers and examines how an empowerment process can help FM employees develop collective competences for SFM. The methodologies used are literature review, and a 3–year-long action research process in the Danish local authority, Albertslund, which is internationally recognised for its innovative and green profile.

This paper describes the phenomenon of public SFM imbedded in societal steering paradigms and suggests a framework for a sustainable FM code of conduct. The suggested “Next generation SFM code of conduct” support the employees in taking a proactive strategic position in which translation between politics, strategy, tactics and daily practice becomes the basis for prioritisation and decision-making. The capabilities needed is FM knowledge (including FM know-how, understanding of technologies for sustainability and public governance); it is the FM code of conduct, and it is control of own practice to be obtained through strategies and planning, collaboration and education.

This study is based on findings in a single local authority, why the findings are primary valid for concept development to be further developed and tested. However, the local authority of Albertslund is recognised as a front runner in green FM, why this case, compare to other cases, represents a relatively mature thinking in terms of FM contribution to sustainability at societal level. When this FM organisation express a need for developing collective competences for sustainability in FM, it can be assumed that less mature FM organisations needs it even more. The findings seem relevant beyond public FM organisations.

The produced framework for a sustainable FM code of conduct is useful for educational purposes as well as for strategic decision about FM organisations collective competence profile. The use of workshops for the building of collective competences might be useful for many other organisations and not only public FM organisations.

Public FM organisations manage significant shares of existing buildings and can be a driver for societal change if they have the capabilities. This paper provides an answer to how these collective capabilities can be build within an organisational development process, through dialogue and collective reflections.

This paper is a pioneer in understanding the capabilities needed in FM organisations to take leadership in an integration of sustainability in FM processes.

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.

The purpose of the paper is to examine the ways that the largest private sector organizations in Sweden and Turkey communicate the intent of their codes of ethics to their employees.

Primary data were obtained via a self‐administered mail questionnaire distributed to a census of the top 500 private sector organizations based on revenue in each country.

The research identified some interesting findings that showed that the small group of companies in Turkey that have a code may appear to be more “advanced” in ethics artifacts usage than Sweden. Such a conclusion is counter‐intuitive as one would have expected a developed nation like Sweden to be more advanced in these measures than a developing nation such as Turkey. Culture may play a large role in the implementation of ethics artifacts in corporations and could be a major reason for this difference.

As this is such a new area of investigation in Turkey, the responses amount to only 32 companies that have a code. The small sample is indicative of the formative evolution toward having codes of ethics within companies operating within Turkey.

This study enables those organizations that comprise corporate Turkey to view the current state of codes of ethics in Turkish companies and to compare these with the responses of a developed country of the European Union.

A review of the literature indicates that this is the first time that such an international study specifically focused upon codes of ethics and the artifacts to inculcate the ethos of the code into every day corporate affairs has included Turkey as one of the participating countries.