an international survey of bribery and ethical standards in companies.
Ethical standards in major corporations are coming under increasing scrutiny, and financial institutions have been challenged about conflicts of interest and their investment advice. Big pharmaceutical companies are being criticised for focussing on lifestyle drugs and neglecting major diseases in developing countries. However a number of initiatives and regulations are being developed which place particular emphasis on combating bribery and corruption.
EIRIS conducts ongoing research into the social, environmental and governance practices of 2,800 major companies in 23 countries. This research includes an assessment of the quality of each company’s business ethics code (or policy) and the extent to which business ethics management systems which are in place.
For the purpose of this study, EIRIS defines business ethics as how a company conducts its business and the behaviour of its employees. On both policy and systems each company is assigned one of five assessment levels – ‘advanced’, ‘intermediate’, ‘basic’, ‘limited’ and ‘nothing’ in situations where there is no evidence of any business ethics code (or system) whatsoever.
See full Report, in pdf format.
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