Compliance with Codes of Ethical Conduct: The Effects of Authority and Proximity on Ethical Reasoning

Ethical failures at large, once-respected firms have dramatically illustrated that ethical behavior is of vital importance to organizations. Information technology may be one type of tool to help get widespread participation in ethical processes in distributed organizations to raise the level of awareness of ethical issues and ethics programs. This paper integrates Jones model of ethical decision making with Weaver and Trevino´s findings on compliance with ethics programs to study ethical decision making. The study uses web-based discussion forums to examine the effects of authority and proximity (closeness to the subject) on moral reasoning concerning the punishment for a student guilty of cheating and intent of moral actors to comply with codes of ethics. It was found that authority and proximity affect ethical decisions, but the process did not increase intent to comply with the ethics code. Overall, participants seemed satisfied with the process and their decisions.