Implementing Strategic Management via Code of Ethics: A Quantitative Research on Private Sector in Greece

Abstract

Code of ethics is a substantially important tool of strategic management ensuring sound accounting and non-accounting corporate governance. It exists as a written text articulating a bundle of rules, principles and standards developed to curb unethical decisions. The effective use of a value-based code of ethics safeguards integrity and transparency and preserves trust and loyalty between a business and its stakeholders (investors, customers, partners, and employees). Much empirical research has been done on the codes of ethics, but a few studies have explored employee’s attitude and perception regarding two crucial dimensions of code of ethics. Thus, the aim of the study is to analyze the code implementation strength and the code embeddedness. The first one refers to the degree to which code is communicated within the business and the other is the extent to which code is integrated into the business cul-ture. Primary data was obtained using a thirteen-item questionnaire from 2.408 employees working in different industries in Greece. Friedman’s test was used to rank-ordering the measures for each questionnaire item and factor analysis explore and categorize the crucial factors of code of ethics. The findings presented have both policy implications and practical contributions.