Business ethics; Code of Ethics; Ethical Principles

Purpose: The paper deals with the code of ethics as a significant tool of business ethics. Its objective is to evaluate a chosen set of Czech codes of ethics from different points of view and to find typical characteristics and specifics of these documents. The attention focuses on form and content criteria.Design/methodology/approach: A basic analysis of form, content and structure of a set of codes of ethics used in the praxis was carried out in this paper. The first phase of the research formulates the theoretical base and identifies the criteria for the empirical research. The research is carried out on a chosen set of 20 codes of ethics of individual companies in the Czech language available online. These codes are evaluated from the point of view of their form and content on the basis of discourse and genre analyses. The main characteristic features of the chosen set of codes of ethics are identified. Findings: The gained results help to show the profile of a typical company Czech code of ethics. It is typically not longer than 6 standard pages and has an entry part that could be understood as a preamble. The code is mostly classified by problem areas and offers personal text style. The majority of the codes do not have explicitly defined values, but almost all of them accentuate the observance of law.Research/practical implications: The results of the paper, as described in findings, can be used by the management of companies that should respect specific content and form aspects when creating their codes of ethics. For the science, it is important that the principles of business ethics find their application in the Czech business environment and in the available tools of business ethics although often in coexistence with law principles which are not the key topic of business ethics.Originality/value: The paper studies a real and present-day set of documents and brings original results in this field of study.