Communication Makes a Corporate Code of Ethics Effective: Lessons from Hong Kong

Ten years after the start of a major business ethics campaign spearheaded by the Hong Kong Ethics Development Centre and the Hong Kong Housing Department in 2001, the relationships were examined between different methods of communicating the corporate code of ethics within a particular organization and the attitudes of the employees toward that code. An attitude survey was employed to identify the relationships. Some communication methods were more effective in influencing employee attitudes than others. Use of informal communication channels together with formal sources of information were generally more highly valued by employees. Employees considered that they received less ethics-related information than they actually needed irrespective of whether the channel of communication was formal or informal. A corporate code of ethics must be communicated in the correct manner if it is to influence the ethical behavior of employees.