Codes of ethics and the pursuit of organizational legitimacy: Theoretical and empirical contributions [Book Review]

Journal of Business Ethics 77 (2):173 - 189 (2008)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The focus of this paper is to further a discussion of codes of ethics as institutionalized organizational structures that extend some form of legitimacy to organizations. The particular form of legitimacy is of critical importance to our analysis. After reviewing various theories of legitimacy, we analyze the literature on how legitimacy is derived from codes of ethics to discover which specific form of legitimacy is gained from their presence in organizations. We content analyze a sample of codes to consider the question of whether a strategic, self-interested rationale lies behind the adoption of a code of ethics. We propose that the process of employing codes of ethics in this strategic manner has become, through isomorphism, an institutionalized practice that itself confers a cognitive form of legitimacy to the organization and further distances the codes from their moral foundation.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Analytics

Added to PP
2009-01-28

Downloads
66 (#222,759)

6 months
4 (#319,344)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Catherine Driscoll
North Carolina State University

References found in this work

Business codes of multinational firms: What do they say?Muel Kaptein - 2004 - Journal of Business Ethics 50 (1):13-31.
A Code of Ethics for Corporate Code of Ethics.Mark S. Schwartz - 2002 - Journal of Business Ethics 41 (1-2):27 - 43.
The ethics revolution.Marjorie Kelly - 2005 - Business Ethics 19 (2).

View all 9 references / Add more references