Best practices in ethics management: Insights from a qualitative study in Slovakia

Date01 January 2021
AuthorAnna Lašáková,Anna Remišová,Alexandra Bohinská
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/beer.12316
Published date01 January 2021
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wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/beer Business Ethics, Env & Resp. 2021;30:54–75.© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
1 | INTRODUCTION
Over the past t wo decades, intense re search interest has fo cused on
the development of ethics management concepts and related prac-
tical method ologies. The significan ce of ethics management in con-
temporar y organizations was well ou tlined by Kaptein (1998, pp. 44,
45) who stated that e thics management “is a legi timate field of man-
agerial prac tice because of the import ance of ethics for the organi-
zation, the specific perspective from which organizations are seen
(normative ethic s), and because of th e proper method s, skills and
instruments for auditing, improving and safeguarding the ethics of
organization s.” In their influentia l paper, Treviño and Brown (200 4)
view ethics man agement as a system of multi ple interconnected for-
mal and informal elements, and emphasize conscious management of
the company’s culture through open and consistent communication,
reward and disciplinary systems, and promoting ethical leadership
throughout th e firm. Ultimate ly, an integrated ethic s management
system can pro tect individua ls from organizat ional pressures t hat
encourage flawed behavior.
Painter-Morland (2015) considers ethics management a sub-
section of business ethics focusing on organizational and individual
ethical inter ventions that are a imed to establis h control over the
behavior and pe rceptions of employee s as well as other compa ny
stakeholders. According to Constantinescu and Kaptein, ethics
management involves a “systematic, coherent, and iterative deter-
mination of what th e ethical criteri a of an organization s hould be,
and the development, implementation, and monitoring of the inter-
ventions to meet th ese criteria” (Cons tantinescu & Ka ptein, 2019,
p. 6). Thus, in essen ce, ethics managem ent is established as a com-
plex process th at includes interco nnected progr ams and practic es
Received: 19 Octo ber 2019 
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  Revised: 5 August 2 020 
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  Accepted: 12 Augus t 2020
DOI: 10 .1111/bee r.12316
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Best practices in ethics management: Insights from a
qualitative study in Slovakia
Anna Lašáková | Anna Remišová | Alexandra Bohinská
Faculty of Management, Comenius
University in Bratislava, Bratislava, Slovakia
Correspondence
Anna Lašáko vá, Faculty of Manage ment,
Comenius University in Bratislava,
Odbojárov 10, 820 0 5 Bratislava, Slova kia.
Email: anna.lasakova@fm.uniba.sk
Funding information
Agentúra na P odporu Výskumu a Vý voja,
Grant/Award Number: Contract no. APVV-
16-00 91
Abstract
Voluminous growth of new eth ics management element s in corporate pract ice implies
the need to enrich it s theoretical understan ding. Most studies delineate ethic s man-
agement conventionally as m easures primarily applied for est ablishing ethical norms
and employee complian ce. Furthermore, many models a re somewhat limited in scope
and amount of presente d practices and usually do not conceptua lize ethics manage-
ment functions b eyond traditional compliance-integrit y discussion. In addition, most
models are not ground ed in empirical research. With the ai m to contribute to ethics
management theor y and bridge it with pr actice, this study e mploys a construct ivist
approach and maps b est practices in et hics management via fou r focus groups with
management profession als. Results sugges t that ethics manageme nt can be viewed
as a fundamentall y participative and co llaborative process , as a way of building re-
lationships with external stakeholders, balancing structured planning and flexible
change, and profoundly amalgamating with human resource management processes.
Furthermore, in a n Inventory of best practices e ncompassing 70 ethics pr actices, this
study outlines n ine functional subp rocesses as key aspect s of ethics management ’s
practical im plementation. As the resea rch was conducted in Slovakia, this s tudy pro-
vides unique informat ion on the recent development s in ethics management in one of
the post-transitional count ries in the region of Central and Easter n Europe.
  
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LAŠÁKOVÁ et AL.
aiming to maintain an ethical organizational environment via estab-
lishing values a nd normative expe ctations for em ployee behavior,
monitoring, an d control. In line wit h that, the theo retical discus-
sions accentuate th e compliance versu s integrity (value s) functions
of ethics manage ment and their align ment (Guinn, 20 00; Treviño,
Weaver, Gibson, & Toffler, 1999; Verhezen, 2010; Weaver & Treviño,
1999), and the formal-infor mal, or alternatively, the t acit-explicit du-
alistic nature of co mponents (Bel ak, Duh, Mulej, & Št rukelj, 2010;
Brenner, 1992; Majluf & Navar rete, 2011; Morris, Schin dehutte,
Walton, & Allen, 20 02). In this context, this stud y seeks to address
the following ga ps and limitations in the cu rrent ethics management
discourse.
First, today ’s business prac tice shows a volumino us growth
of innovative ethic al forms and pra ctices in ethic s management
(Atkins, 2019; Petr y, 2017; Taylor & Cohen, 2016). However, despite
this quick progr ess in corporate practice , much of the literature still
defines ethic s management convent ionally as a set of meas ures
aimed primari ly at establishi ng ethical norms a nd employee com-
pliance through monitoring, auditing and control (Constantinescu
& Kaptein, 2019; Kaptei n, 1998; Painter-Morland, 2015), or, al-
ternatively, as a spec ific set of control me chanisms (Lawto n &
Macaulay, 2015). This st udy aims to contribu te to the theoretic al
understanding of ethics management in line with the development
of this specific f ield in the manageme nt practice. Base d on four focus
groups with a wide r ange of management p rofessionals from v ar-
ious spheres of bu siness, this stu dy maps ethics man agement ele-
ments our resp ondents perceive as having t he greatest added value
in their compani es, and on the basis of a r igorous inducti ve anal-
ysis of the rich qual itative data, it ex tends theoretical underpinnings
of ethics management. This practice-based theoretical refinement
suggests th at ethics management can be del ineated as a highly par-
ticipative, collaborative, and dialog-based process that connects the
top-down and bot tom-up ethics-related en deavors of managers and
nonmanageria l employees. In add ition, the litera ture typical ly em-
phasizes establishing internal relationships in the company, mostly
on an owner-manager-employee b asis. Yet, the results of this study
point to a more broa dly conceived ethics manageme nt as a process
of building relat ionships beyond the c ompany borders wi th exter-
nal stakeholders, in other words, as a way to promote and support
inclusion of external company stakeholders, whose opinions and re-
quirements sh ould become an or ganic part of ethi cs management
in the company. Furthermore, our research shows that companies
should maintain an equilibrium between structured planning in ethics
management and its capacity to change flexibly in accordance with
emerging situational challenges. Finally, this study theorizes that the
current ethics management practices are being increasingly inter-
twined with t he human resource m anagement prac tices and it can
be assumed that a tre nd of ethics managem ent and human reso urce
management amalgamation has evolved over recent year s in the cor-
porate practice.
Second, although the literature provides several models or sets
of ethics compo nents, the majori ty of extant meth odologies is some -
what limited in scop e and amount of presented prac tices. This was
observed als o by Collins (2015, p. 305) who realize d that “managers
needed a prac tical and syste matic benchmark ing tool, with ident ified
best pract ices for policies and processes t o help them increas e the
likelihood of ethical organizational performance.” Similarly, in a more
recent study by Ma rtineau, Joh nson, and Paucha nt (2017, p. 792),
authors assum e “that not much research h as focused on diverse and
concrete prac tices intertwined as prog rams.” In connection to that,
the second contr ibution of this study is to expand the recommenda-
tions for ethics ma nagement that are reflec ted in the current theory into
a more fine-graine d set of practices that work th e best for companies.
To raise the practic al usability of this study for co mpany managers
and policy make rs, we have used a rich mos aic of qualitative res earch
results to compi le an Inventory of best practice s in ethics management
(see Annex 4) conta ining 70 specific prac tices covering a wide range
of ethics manage ment activities . Yet, it is important to note h ere that
this inventory s hall not be viewed as an al l-inclusive list. R ather, it
can be viewed as an e xtended plat form with potential f or further
discussion and refinement. Moreover, its applicability is conditioned
by the specific s of the company enviro nment, and manag ers need
to consider sensitively which of these practices would fit into their
company’s managem ent system. It should ser ve primarily as a road-
map or an overvie w of what works in practice and m ight be inspira-
tional for compa nies, for instance as a possi ble point of reference in
planning new ethical measures or in ethics audits.
Third, authors usually enumerate ethics management ele-
ments, and th en, categorize the m in different ways , mostly along
the formal-infor mal (or implicit-explici t) dimensions or bas ed on
the sequential order of their implementation (e.g., Kaptein, 2009;
Svensson, Wood, & Ca llaghan, 2010). Never theless, besi des this
conceptual work , most authors u sually have not conside red the
functional subprocesses in their concepts. Only recently have au-
thors star ted to conceptual ize the ethics manage ment function s
beyond the traditional compliance-integrity discussion (Paine, 1994;
Weaver & Treviño, 1999; Weaver, Treviño, & Cochran, 1999b). For
instance, Ka ptein (2015) hypothesi zed over seven functi ons in this
context, Mar tineau et al. (2017) pointed out six dif ferent functions
or “orientations” a s they call them, and Collin s (2015) outlined in his
“Optimal ethic s systems mode l” five consecuti ve core processes.
Following the above mentioned, the third contrib ution of this study
lies in outlining functional subprocesses in ethics management. These
were establis hed in the process of c ategorizing the 70 et hics man-
agement prac tices. With full r espect for the co ntext in which the
practices a ppeared during t he focus groups, we s ought to group
them according to t heir meaning and in tended functi on. Through
this process, we r ealized that the cate gorization into for mal versus
informal, or compliance-based and values-based components, which
dominate the lite rature so far (e.g., B elak & Milfelner, 2011; Jose &
Thibodeaux , 1999; Treviño et al., 1999; Warren, 2019), was not fully
applicable i n terms of the nature an d diversity of our re sults. Thus,
we suggest in the I nventory of best practi ces in ethics management
(Annex 4) a new clas sification based on th e nine functiona l subpro-
cesses that emerged from the i n-depth analysis of the content , sub-
stance, and semantic connotations of the identified elements. These

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