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This article examines the results of a study conducted of the top 100 public sector units in Sweden. These units are comprised of entities of government, municipalities, and county councils. The aim of the study was to examine and describe the commitment to codes of ethics in these Swedish public sector units. This article reports on the responses of those public sector units that possessed a code of ethics. The construct of commitment was measured by a consideration of the inputs, objectives and outputs of the code across six areas. The commitment to codes of ethics has an interest for those involved in the public sector in Sweden and society in general. Most public sector units are in the early stages of development and assimilation into overall ethics policies in code artefacts. On a specific level there are customized codes of ethics that are not always documented in a generic artefact. Theoretical and managerial implications are provided. Furthermore, suggestions for further research are proposed.

Codes of ethics are a moral reflection centred on the duties and rights of a given profession that establishes the minimum moral standards required. These codes imply self-regulation and therefore an individual application on the conduct of professionals. In this chapter we reflect on the main values that guide PR practice based on Schwartz's theory of basic human values, which measures universal values that are recognised throughout all major cultures. A qualitative and quantitative content analysis was carried out of the codes of ethics of six national PR and communication associations and of the Global Alliance's code. The ethics codes were analysed to study the priorities of values stressed by PR professional associations and to highlight the motivational values that may be present in them. Findings show that values contained in the codes of ethics are based on a system of 32 human values; three of the values – the common good, integrity and truthfulness – are identified in all the codes; motivational values relating to universalism, benevolence and conformity are also covered to varying degrees in all the texts. It has been confirmed that the Global Alliance code is the only text that deals with the values of all the motivations described by Schwartz. The PR codes of ethics are based on a list of common ethical values of a collective nature, which are mostly contemplated by the Global Alliance; the main difference at the national level is that Latin countries include in their texts more principles of ethical universalism.

Democracies typically impose onerous regulation on the conduct of bureaucratic officials and remarkably light regulation of the conduct of elected officials. The traditional presumption was that politicians should be allowed to self-regulate. In many democratic regimes, politicians have shown themselves unable to carry this burden of public trust. As a result, political ethics is regulated from a perspective of public distrust, associated with fears of political corruption. Despite my personal reservations about professional ethics models (recorded here by reference to recent fictional work of novelist J.M. Coetzee), I revive a trust-based perspective to make a case for a regime of self-regulation for democratic politicians, based on a democratic hope that politicians can be trusted to act as responsible professionals.

Over 100 years ago, the bureaucratic compact and five professions were established: city/county management, city planning, civil engineering, landscape architecture, and architecture. In exchange for merit employment and independence from politics, these professions offered expertise and related values. To understand those values and changes in the compact from the 1900s to today, codes of ethics from the five professions were examined. Anticipated changes were a movement from traditional public values to business values including New Public Management. However, findings show traditional values persisting over time (e.g. public interest), but not many New Public Management values (e.g. innovation). Modern values do appear and expand professionalsʼ responsibilities into environmental protection, sustainability, and human rights, which influence what these professions offer as they seek to uphold their end of the bureaucratic compact.

This study aims to explicate the characteristics of ethical knowledge according to a knowledge management theoretical framework that conveys ethical knowledge as a form of tacit knowledge that is personal, subjective, intangible, and difficult to communicate to others.

The study is based on a survey with 350 public relations practitioners in the USA.

The findings show that ethical knowledge in public relations, as a professional construct, is tacit only to the extent that it is a personal body of knowledge grounded in individual actions and experiences, but it is explicit in that it is tangible and could be communicated and shared in the workplace. Age, work experience and the number of ethics courses taken in an individual's public relations career are some of the significant determinants shaping the public relations practitioners' conceptualizations of ethical knowledge.

The study reinforces the importance of a holistic approach to ethics, where structured and formal training programs and codes of ethics are supported directly by a congruence between formal initiatives and public relations professionals' personal values.

By explicating the characteristics of ethical knowledge and its implications on knowledge transfer of ethics in public relations, and in understanding the determinants shaping public relations professionals' conceptualization of ethical knowledge, this study offers an empirical contribution to an area of study that has received mostly normative and philosophical discussion.

This study sets out to understand the extent to which public relations practitioners use dissent tactics in the face of organizational unethical decisions, and to examine how organizational environment facilitates such dissent.

A web‐based survey was conducted with the assistance of the research team of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA). A systematic random sample of 6,126 practitioners was drawn from the 2008 PRSA membership directory.

The results reaffirmed that “assertive confrontation” was the most frequently adopted tactic to resist an unethical organizational decision. Practitioners were more likely to confront management in an organization where top leaders do not support or exhibit ethical behavior. When an organization does not have an ethics code, practitioners were more likely to agitate others to oppose the unethical decision. Selective use of information and sabotage tactics were adopted when an organization does not value open communication.

The study was limited to practitioners in the USA, and the response rate was very low (4.02 percent).

As one of the grounding studies in public relations dissent, this research contributes to better understanding how public relations practitioners make an effort to promote organizational ethics by resisting unethical organizational decisions. The study also sheds light on the characteristics and nature of dissent in public relations, an important but little explored area in the field.

This article summarizes and aggregates the results of a study conducted of the largest 100 public sector organizations derived from three categories in Sweden. These categories of organizations comprise 40 entities of government, 40 municipalities, and 20 county councils. The objective was to describe the determinants of codes of ethics in Swedish public sector organizations. This research reports on the responses of 27 organizations that possessed a code of ethics. The principal contribution is a 4P‐model of seven internal and external determinants in public sector codes of ethics. The identified determinants relate to four principal sectors of a society, namely: public community sector, private corporate sector, private citizen sector, and political/policy conduct sector.

This study is motivated to investigate the ethical challenges facing public relations professionals in today's digital communication environment. Specifically, the authors focused the research on the new ethical challenges in digital practice, the resources relied on when encountering ethical challenges and public relations professionals' efforts in seeking trainings on communication ethics.

An international online survey was designed and conducted in Canada and the USA. The final sample includes 1,046 respondents working full time in the profession of public relations and communication. In addition, the authors prespecified several demographic quotas in sampling design in order to recruit a more representative sample.

The research found nearly 60% of surveyed professionals reported that they faced ethical challenges in their day-to-day work, and there is a wide range of ethical challenges in digital practices. Results also revealed that professionals use various resources to deal with ethical issues. Those resources include ethical codes of practice of professional associations, ethical guidelines of their organizations and their personal values and beliefs. As common as experiencing ethical challenges, over 85% of surveyed professionals reported that they have participated in communication ethics training. However, only 30% of participants indicated that their ethics training took place in the past year.

The research provides solid evidence that the digital communication environment generates more ethical challenges, while it creates new ways of delivering content in corporate communications. Professional associations and organizations shall dedicate efforts in providing timely ethics training to PR professionals at all levels of leadership within and beyond corporate communications.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the implementation, communication and benefits of codes of ethics in the public sector of Sweden.

The research is based on a longitudinal approach. It examines the ethos of codes of ethics in the largest public sector organizations of Sweden in 2001‐2002 and 2005‐2006.

Only a few of the largest public sector organizations in Sweden have indicated that they possess codes of ethics. This finding may be explained by the current judicial legislation that governs Swedish society. The public codes of ethics have been established both recently and, in part, years ago.

A suggestion for further research would be to examine the implementation, communication and perceived benefits of public sector codes of ethics in other countries. Another area of further research would be to replicate the reported surveys in the future to examine the existence of potential trends.

When it comes to the perceived benefits of public sector codes of ethics there appears to be only minor acknowledgement of the code being used to resolve ethical problems in society. However, there is a strong conviction that the code of ethics positively influences the operations of public sector organizations.

The paper examines the ethical implementation, communication and benefits put in place by private companies to embed codes of ethics into their organizations.