Corporate governance and business ethics: Pictures of the policies

Abstract

This study analyses the ethics policies of the world's four largest oil companies, as communicated on their websites, using the Leximancer approach. The text contained in the ethics policies of these firms was used in a content analysis and then mapped. This article illustrates a powerful, but simple and relatively inexpensive way for executives and corporate governance scholars to examine ethics policies, particularly as they are communicated online. The intent is to demonstrate a research and analysis method. The major contribution of this study is the use of a new research approach and set of tools that ethics researchers, policy makers and managers can exploit. The technique is easy to use, and the results are similarly straightforward to interpret.