Since 1994, the Ethics & Compliance Initiative (ECI) has conducted a longitudinal, cross-sectional study of workplace conduct from the employee’s perspective. Now in its sixteenth iteration, ECI’s Global Business Ethics Survey® (GBES®) data provide the global benchmark on the state of ethics & compliance (E&C) in business. Since its inception, ECI’s research has provided leaders with reliable data on trends in workplace ethics focusing on the key drivers that improve ethical cultures in the workplace and how changes in culture impact ethics outcomes. The strength of an organization’s ethics culture is measured through multiple indicators of employee behaviors at various levels within an organization, including leaders, supervisors and coworkers. These behaviors demonstrate and promote a commitment to ethics on a daily basis. A thriving ethics culture involves commitment, modeling and the right conduct by all employees in an organization. Our research shows that the quality of an organization’s E&C program and the strength of the organization’s ethics culture is key to achieving desired ethics outcomes. In addition, while a multitude of factors influence ethical behavior, the interplay of four major ethics outcomes are tied to the daily micro decisions employees make with respect to how they behave in the workplace. These are: pressure in the workplace to compromise ethical standards; observations of misconduct; reporting misconduct; and ultimately, the retaliation perceived by employees after they reported misconduct.
