Das von Thomas Stöber, Peter Kotzian und Barbara E. Weißenberger verfasste Papier “One size fits all – but not all the time: An experiment on the effectiveness of codes of conduct in decision dilemmas” wurde zur Präsentation auf dem Research Forum der Konferenz der European Accounting Association (EAA) in Glasgow angenommen. Die jährliche EAA-Konferenz ist die größte und bedeutsamste internationale wissenschaftliche Accounting-Fachkonferenz in Europa.
Abstract:
Codes of conduct are a common management control instrument used by firms to ensure compliance as well as ethical behavior of their employees. Still, the effectiveness of codes of conduct in decision dilemmas, relating, e.g., to the acceptance of gifts or the choice of a more eco-friendly vs. cheap suppliers, is still under-researched. There exists diverging empirical evidence on the effectiveness of codes of conduct in particular with respect to specific design elements of codes of conduct as well as to personal or situational factors in decision-making. In our paper, we address this research question by studying the effectiveness of codes of conduct in a vignette-based experimental design. Our results indicate that codes of conduct matter as they induce desired decision behaviors, even more so when the behavior in question is visible and there is no personal benefit at stake. Also, top management’s signature makes codes of conduct more effective. On the other hand, we observe a trade-off between making a code of conduct easy to learn vs. making it effective. Finally, even though being conditional on different decision situations, we do not find evidence for subjects’ personal characteristics having an impact.
Our paper contributes by addressing the effectiveness of codes of conduct as a management control instrument empirically, thus providing additional insights into the question of how to write and design codes of conduct in practice.