Authors: Evangelia Pappa, John Filos, Panagiotis Spanos

Title: Employee Perceptions of Workplace Ethical Behavior: An Empirical Study in Audit and Advisory Firms

Abstract

Code of ethics is a collection of principles and rules of conduct and serves as a foundation to ethical behavior. The primary objective of the study is to determine whether the implementation of code of ethics amounts to more than mere "window dressing". As such it is examined the possible relationship with internal infringements inside the working environment. The focus of analysis is the employee perceptions in Audit and Consulting firms in Greece. The survey instrument originated by Kaptein (2003) is used to measure employees’ ethical behavior. Cluster analysis is performed on 48 variables regarding the observed infringements. Empirical findings indicate that the presence and substantial implementation of codes of ethics has a strong relationship with unethical attitudes.