A Code of Ethics as an Ethical Organizational Management Tool

Over the long term, companies and their employees are facing increasing demands from customers, business partners, as well as wider society, to behave ethically. As a result, there is a parallel increase in internal demands for an organization to behave ethically related to the performance management of employees and the support of employee motivation. These requirements increase the importance of a code of ethics as one of the main tools for promoting the ethical conduct of an organization. This article aims to highlight the main principles of the contents, creation and enforcement of a code of ethics in organizations and to verify their compliance in practice. This objective was achieved through a questionnaire survey involving 607 companies, which sought to determine the extent to which a code of ethics is used by Czech companies as a management tool, including differences in its usage across different types of organizations, as well as the frequency with which it is evaluated and whether comments are accepted and the code updated based on such feedback.