Experiences and Perceptions of Public Managers about the Use of Ethical Codes in State Owned Enterprises (SOEs)
Rodríguez Bolívar, M.P., Garde Sánchez, R. and Ayuso Siart, S. (2015) Experiences and Perceptions of Public Managers about the Use of Ethical Codes in State Owned Enterprises (SOEs), in: Nelson, W.D. (ed.), Advances in Business and Management, Volume 8, Nova Science Publishers, New York, pp. 23-40.
Practices related to ethical codes have extensive experience in the field of business. However, there is a lack of research on this concern in the field of public sector. Taking into account the relevance of the ethical codes into corporate social responsibility systems (CSR), the present study aims to know the perception of public managers regarding the implementation of codes of ethics and analyze the content of ethical codes in State Owned Enterprises (SOEs). To achieve this aim, we used the database of the Ministry of Economy and Finance of Spain on Spanish SOEs with a total volume of 617 SOEs registered and we contacted with them by email and postal mail. We asked for the managers of Spanish SOEs their collaboration to answer an online questionnaire and to submit the ethical code of the SOEs if such a document were available. The findings show that more efforts and resources should be devoted both in terms of the implementation of ethical policies and CSR in SOEs as well as in mechanisms to check the effective implementation and enforcement of such aspects.