The Ethical Management Practices of Australian Firms

Is Corporate Ethical Practice Changing? Evidence from Sri-Lanka

“…Organization culture and governance practice are likely to change over the company's life cycle due to changes in the structure of equity and the dilution of the controlling interest of original stakeholders. In the studies by Batten et al (1997Batten et al ( , 1999 there were few companies that used forums to discuss ethical issues. However, the proportion in the developed market of Australia was higher at (36.8 per cent) than in Sri Lanka (26.3 per cent).…”

“…They also observed that high tech and primary sector industries were found to possess formal written codes of ethics and written environmental policies and practices. The studies of Batten et al (1997Batten et al ( , 1999 examined larger publicly listed Australian companies, which tended Is Corporate Ethical Practice Changing? Evidence from Sri-Lanka 63 to lean towards an appreciation of environmental issues, whereas in the case of Sri Lanka, primary sector companies and larger companies were also found to be sensitive to these issues.…”

“…Statistical techniques and their inclusion in ethics literature follow comments from Randall and Gibson (1990), and more recently by Dean (1997) amongst others, who argue for the formal assessment of empirically based ethics research using statistical procedures that clearly establish the various links between the variables. Examples of these applications include the Batten et al (1997Batten et al ( , 1999 studies, which establish what ethical practices are in use and what factors influence this practice. Based on these studies we investigate the following three propositions: Proposition 1.…”

“…Various company-specific variables have been contrasted with ethical management practice variables by Batten et al (1997Batten et al ( , 1999, with further x 2 -analysis used to ascertain the statistical relationships between the variables. Statistical techniques and their inclusion in ethics literature follow comments from Randall and Gibson (1990), and more recently by Dean (1997) amongst others, who argue for the formal assessment of empirically based ethics research using statistical procedures that clearly establish the various links between the variables.…”

“…Most important of all for this essay, the earlier study by Batten et al (1999) predated any implementation of the CACG (1999) principles. The relationship between company-specific factors and variations in ethical management practices has also been studied by Murphy et al (1992) and Batten et al (1997 and. Macdonald and Zepp (1988) and Rashid (1990) have also examined socio-economic factors and their influence on management's perception of unethical practice.…”