| This study explored what corporate managers in Taiwan think about the need for formal codes of ethics in the businesses operations that they manage. Communication practices of corporate ethics programs to the members of business organizations that those corporate managers lead were also investigated. To address the purpose of this exploratory study, a survey and interview methodology was used. The survey sought to collect data from a 300 random sample of the Top 1000 Taiwanese companies in regarding to research questions. The interviews were conducted with the business leaders at the executive level of corporate structure from the Top 1000 companies. Attempts were also made to explore in-depth perspectives on the application of American-style ethics programs within a changing Chinese cultural context. The major findings of this study indicated that only half of the companies in the survey had a code of ethics. Disciplinary procedures were the most frequently cited element in ethics programs, followed by codes of ethics. This provided that codes of ethics were not the most popular component in Taiwanese corporation ethics. Additionally, this study indicated the three major reasons for Taiwanese corporations planning to expand existing efforts to incorporate ethical values in the corporate environment within the next three years were “to establish better corporation culture,” “to provide guidelines for employee behavior,” and “to improve management.” All these statements indicated Taiwanese corporations were more concerned with internal factors of the company. Two major themes emerged from the transcribed conversation notes taken during the interviews: a concern about the implications of globalization and the application of American-style ethics in the cultural context. In terms of cultural dimension, the executive informants suggested that Western and Eastern societies are different in many ways and indicated concern about the cultural inappropriateness. Within the globalization dimension, the executive informants think Taiwan will soon become a member of the World Trade Organization. As a member of WTO, Taiwanese corporations will be connected to the global business environment and will be on par with international standards. |
