Ring in Year With Good Business Ethics -- The Innovators

The new year presents a fresh opportunity for companies to make a clean start when it comes to business ethics. According to a recent survey from the Ethics Resource Center, now is a great time to do it.

The ERC survey, released at the end of 2009, suggests that many companies have been practicing better business ethics since the recession hit. This happy result contrasts nicely with initial data and earlier predictions by ethics pundits who thought that tougher economic times would give companies an excuse to cut ethical corners.

According to ERC, fewer employees in 2009 said they had seen misconduct in the workplace compared with 2007; the measure fell to 49% in 2009 from 56% in 2007. The number of employees who reported misconduct when they saw it increased to 63% from 58% in the same two-year period. ERC's measure of the strength of ethical cultures in companies increased nine percentage points to 62%. Employees also reported that perceived pressure to commit ethics violations declined to 8% from 10%.

All of this good news led ERC to conclude that businesses are "experiencing an ethics bubble." It's encouraging to think that in tough times companies have risen to the challenges facing them while staying true to their ethical principles. Unfortunately, the ERC survey data may not entirely support that "happily-ever-after" conclusion.

The positive trends that ERC observed typically involve only a few percentage points, hardly cause to rejoice. The one exception to that was the nine-point percentage improvement in ERC's measure of the ethical strength of companies. That was good news, but the total number of 62% is far from an A+.