Documento de trabajo nº 10: Códigos éticos de las empresas españolas: Un análisis de su contenido

CODES OF ETHICS OF SPANISH COMPANIES: A CONTENT ANALYSIS

Silvia Ayuso
Jordi Garolera
July 2011

Over the past few years, the use of codes of ethics or codes of conduct has greatly proliferated among companies in order to communicate internally and externally the values and principles they advocate and the expected behaviour of employees in their relations with the various stakeholders of the company. This study aims to examine the content of ethical codes defined by Spanish companies and analyse the commitments made in these documents. By means of a code sample of 58 companies from different sectors and sizes we study which values/principles and rules of conduct the codes refer to, whether there are a common set of values/principles and rules of conduct and if these common commitments are similar to or different from the commitments made by multinational companies (based on a study by Kaptein in 2002).