Concepts of ethical behavior and corporate social responsibility have emerged in recent years due to organizations’ increasing ethical problems. Business ethics, social responsibility, and corporate governance are significant drivers for organizational performance, growth, and sustainable development (SD). In this paper, we propose an original tool, at a macroeconomic level, for the integration of concepts such as business ethics (BE), corporate social responsibility (CSR), and corporate governance (CG). The paper also seeks to establish the relationships among corporate responsibility dimensions (CR), sustainability, and economic performance. This research used the Sustainable Development Report 2020, Candriam’s ESG Country Report, World Bank Doing Business 2020 Report, World Bank national accounts data, and Eurostat as data sources. As part of the research, we selected the European Union states (27) plus the United Kingdom. The main results reveal the positive direct and indirect influences of corporate responsibility on economic performance, ultimately leading to sustainable development.

Social responsibility (SR) is a concept or practice by which organizations take into account the interest of society by taking responsibility for the impact of their activities on all stakeholders. The SR of organizations implies ethical behavior concerning all stakeholders and a company’s commitment to the sustainable economic development of society. Organizational ethics is a set of written and unwritten codes of principles and values that govern decisions and actions within an organization. Ethics has a rather internal perspective, while social responsibility has a rather external perspective. This study examines the impact of social responsibility and organizational ethics on employees’ wellbeing. To perform the empirical analysis, we conducted a survey among 423 employees from Romanian organizations. Using the structural equation modeling, we analyzed the relationships between social responsibility, organizational ethics, and employees’ wellbeing, emphasizing the positive impact of ethical and responsible behavior of the organization on the employees’ wellbeing. The organization’s employees play a dual role: firstly, they are all internal stakeholders, and secondly, they are constituents of an external stakeholder essential for the organization—the community. The results show a significant positive influence of social responsibility and organizational ethics on employees’ wellbeing as a result of a responsible and ethical behavior in relation to the organizational stakeholders.

Organizations do not function in isolation in society. On the part of society, it is expected that organizations will work in the interest of society and have a sense of obligation to it, to be concerned with solving the problems they have caused. Therefore, the organization should have ethical standards and practice a solid organizational culture and social responsibility to ensure the sustainability and success of the business. The paper aims to address social responsibility and business ethics concerns by building the framework of relationships between social responsibility (SR) and organizational ethics (OE) and determining the moderating effects of organization's reputation (OR), organizational communication (OCm), employee engagement (EE), and organizational culture (OCt). Following structural equation modeling, the paper determines the relationships between the variables and the moderators between these variables. The research results show that CR and OCt strongly moderate the relationship between SR and BE, while OCm and OCm slightly moderate the relationship between SR and OE.

The problem analyzed through this study reflects the national crisis situation of the Romanian educational system, against the allergic background of powerless political influences in a context in which many other systems, such as economic, health, tourism and not only are in a state of collapse. This aspect brings to attention the issue of paradoxes which, from the perspective of other researchers, characterize the process of changing the school organization. In order to better understand the nature of the contradictions of the current change, the experience of experts is relevant through the power of example. If post-pandemic changes mean misalignment, then there is a risk of imbalances and chaos. Therefore, the post-pandemic is becoming an insecure world that is exacerbated with the use of information and communication technology tools. In this case, the nostalgia of educational institutions for the past should probably not be surprised, especially since the change sometimes concerns only external demands, like a wound healed from the outside, leaving the inside in a greater suffering. Among the methodological activities used by the authors are the diagnostic analysis of the managerial documentation and of the quality assurance commission in the Romanian public educational institutions, the exploratory evaluation of the specialized literature. Finally, the result of this research generates analysis criteria for organizational adaptation and processing the stages of the planned institutional change process. These results can help the human resources that need this meticulous process of change and adaptation through the patterns of behavior provided by the authors.