Codes of Ethics, Ethical Behavior, and Organizational Culture from the Managerial Approach: A Case Study in the Colombian Banking Industry.

摘要

This qualitative case study explored managerial perceptions regarding codes of ethics, ethical behavior, and the relationship of these concepts to organizational culture in a Colombian bank ZOX (pseudonym), in a South-American environment. The theoretical framework included ethical theory and the organizational culture theory. The data-collection phase contained a purposive sample of ten ZOX senior managers because of their influence in their company's ethical policy. Data collection included four one-on-one interviews, a focus-group interview, and company documents. The data-analysis process followed the content-analysis technique. The findings include the facts that codes of ethics are mandatory and are circumscribed to specific organizations and contexts; ethical behavior follows general principles and values as ethical guides of duty regardless of the consequences; and the organizational culture is influenced by the leaders' ethical behavior. The findings also serve to trace and describe empirically and theoretically the components of a multi-dimensional approach of an ethical organizational culture. A suggestion for further research might be the testing of this multi-dimensional approach in other settings and going deeper into the relationship among its components.