How important is business ethics: evidence from Estonia

Abstract

How important is business ethics: evidence from Estonia During recent decades, more and more attention has been paid to business ethics. There seems to be an increasing interest in the non-financial aspects of business. Stakeholders all over the world express their concern about embedding the principles of professional and business ethics into companies’ everyday activities. The main subject of this research is business ethics and the purpose is to find out the im-portance of professional and business ethics and determine its place in the modern business world as seen by Estonian business students and practitioners. To achieve the goals, the authors conducted a survey among Estonian graduate and undergraduate accounting and business students at Tallinn University of Technology and Estonian business practitioners. 587 responses were collected in the process. This infor-mation was compiled and analyzed based on status, gender, age, and specialization. The survey revealed that in Estonia people are familiar with business ethics; however, it is not of great interest to them. The results also indicate that professional and business ethics merit more attention and should be included as a required course in the curriculum of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). In general, business ethics in Estonia was not ranked as “high”, which was also the case for both professional ethics at the work-place/university and also the importance and necessity of ethics in the modern business world.