The Influence of Collegiate and Corporate Codes of Conduct on Ethics-Related Behavior in the Workplace
Abstract
Codes of conduct are viewed here as a community's attempt to communicate its expectations and standards of ethical behavior. Many organizations are implementing codes, but empirical support for the relationship between such codes and employee conduct is lacking. We investigated the long term effects of a collegiate honor code experience as well as the effects of corporate ethics codes on unethical behavior in the workplace by surveying alumni from an honor code and a non-honor code college who now work in business. We found that self-reported unethical behavior was lower for respondents who work in an organization with a corporate code of conduct and was inversely associated with corporate code implementation strength and embeddedness. Self-reported unethical behavior was also influenced by the interaction of a collegiate honor code experience and corporate code implementation strength.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Other studies of corporate and professional codes of ethics outside computing have reported similar results.
“Other studies of corporate and professional codes of ethics outside computing have reported similar results.”
From Principles alone cannot guarantee ethical AI (2019) · cites this paper as [68]
Cites
A new scale of social desirability independent of psychopathology.
Crowne, D. P., & Marlowe, D. (1960) · Journal of Consulting Psychology · doi:10.1037/h0047358 · Cited by 8,686 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Principles alone cannot guarantee ethical AI
Mittelstadt, B. (2019) · Nature Machine Intelligence · doi:10.1038/s42256-019-0114-4 · Cited by 1,886 · see citing works
Kish-Gephart, J. J., Harrison, D. A., & Treviño, L. K. (2010) · Journal of Applied Psychology · doi:10.1037/a0017103 · Cited by 1,690 · see citing works
Self-citationCheating in Academic Institutions: A Decade of Research
McCabe, D. L., Trevino, L. K., & Butterfield, K. D. (2001) · Ethics & Behavior · doi:10.1207/s15327019eb1103_2 · Cited by 1,379 · see citing works
Self-citationAcademic Dishonesty in Graduate Business Programs: Prevalence, Causes, and Proposed Action
McCabe, D. L., Butterfield, K. D., & Treviño, L. K. (2006) · Academy of Management Learning & Education · doi:10.5465/amle.2006.22697018 · Cited by 720 · see citing works
Self-citationFACTORS INFLUENCING ENGINEERING STUDENTS’ DECISIONS TO CHEAT BY TYPE OF ASSESSMENT
Passow, H. J., Mayhew, M. J., Finelli, C. J., Harding, T. S., & Carpenter, D. D. (2006) · Research in Higher Education · doi:10.1007/s11162-006-9010-y · Cited by 201 · see citing works
Stone, T. H., Jawahar, I. M., & Kisamore, J. L. (2010) · Basic and Applied Social Psychology · doi:10.1080/01973530903539895 · Cited by 198 · see citing works
AI Ethics – Too Principled to Fail?
Mittelstadt, B. (2019) · SSRN Electronic Journal · doi:10.2139/ssrn.3391293 · Cited by 82 · see citing works
Honor Codes and Academic Integrity: Three Decades of Research
Tatum, H. E. (2022) · Journal of College and Character · doi:10.1080/2194587x.2021.2017977 · Cited by 63 · see citing works
- Authors
- McCabe, D. L., Trevino, L. K., & Butterfield, K. D.
- Venue
- Business Ethics Quarterly
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 1996-10
- Volume
- 6
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 461-476
- ISSN
- 1052-150X (ISSN-L)
- 2153-3326
- OpenAlex
- W2030874261
- Cited by
- 341
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 15 · 2020: 21 · 2019: 14 · 2018: 11 · 2017: 13 · 2016: 17 · 2015: 15 · 2014: 23 · 2013: 15 · 2012: 21
- FWCI
- 10.14
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Business Ethics Quarterly (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- DigitalGeorgetown (Georgetown University Library) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Ethics in Business and Education
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Academic integrity and plagiarism
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management › Job Satisfaction and Organizational Behavior
- Keywords
- codes of conduct, corporate codes of ethics, honor codes, unethical workplace behavior, employee ethical behavior, alumni, organizational culture, business ethics
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
