Social Responsibility and Professional Ethics in Management: Some Empirical Evidences at Country Levels

In the presented exploratory study, we demonstrated some empiricalevidences on relations between social responsibility of business, managerialethics, and economic environment at county levels. We conducteddesk research on 41 countries using different secondary informationsources. We confirmed hypotheses, which associate higher socialresponsibility and ethics to openness and competitiveness of peopleand management, enhanced economic performance, higher economicfreedom, and lower level of corruption. The rationale behind the researchhypothesis is disputed question if socially responsible and ethicallymanaged business is economically more successful and sustainable.Evidently, in the most developed countries unsocial and unethicalbusiness behavior is not generally acceptable. However, in less developedeconomies profit is so high on the priority list that social responsibilityand ethics are academic questions.We hypothesize that companiesconsciously select where it is beneficial to be socially responsibleand ethical, and where it is more profitable to make business ruthlessly.We also tested the hypothesis that social responsibility contributes tothe resilience of economy. This hypothesis was partially confirmed andpartially rejected. Finally, we addressed a question if our results aremeaningful for individual organizations, as well.We could just say thatmore developed countries have a larger proportion of businesses thatbehave affirmatively regarding social and ethical issues, which meansthat they find it beneficial also at individual level.