Přehled o publikaci

Companies, in particular those with a global presence, have been facing increasing demands from their customers, business partners, as well as wider society, to behave ethically in the long-term. As a result, there has been an increase in the importance attached by organizations to having a code of ethics as a tool for ethical company management. The main purpose of such codes is to clearly establish and unequivocally state the rules and principles for the ethical behaviour of managers and employees, internally and externally, as well as towards each other. This article deals with the goals and the contents of codes of ethics, the principles behind their creation, the enforcement of those principles and the main pre-conditions required for ensuring their effectiveness. The empirical part of the article is based on research conducted on a sample set of 607 Czech companies. These companies were divided into four categories according to size. The tested hypothesis was set on the basis of the assumption that more than 50 % of companies use the comments of their departments and employees when implementing changes to their code of ethics. All the tests and calculations of interval estimates were performed at the significance level of 0.05 using R-software. The tables were created in MS Excel. The statistical tests show that more than 50 % of medium and large-sized companies take into account the comments of departments and staff prior to modifying their codes of ethics. The hypothesis was refuted for micro and small-sized companies.