Many corporate PR executives view top management as more concerned about ethical issues than they were 10 years ago.
Yet they also believe management has not been successful in earning greater trust from the public, shareholders and other stakeholders--apparently because they are not making it as great a priority as other business concerns, such as product development, use of technology and globalization, according to the responses of about 150 top corporate PR executives on the topic of corporate ethics.
The study is based on a survey last summer of 300 top corporate PR executives, with most at Fortune 500 companies. About one-half (152) responded. The research was released earlier this month at the annual meeting of the Arthur W. Page Society, an invitation-only group of about 300 mostly corporate executives in the top PR posts at their companies.
The study results show that "corporate public relations [executives] can play a major role in enhancing business ethics, but they can't do it alone--they have to have the help of the CEO and other major functions," said Don Wright, Ph.D., a University of South Alabama professor who conducted the study.
One of the areas of major progress has been communication of corporations' ethics to employees. Seventy-one percent of respondents said that corporate ethical guidelines and values were being more clearly communicated than 10 years ago.
Mark McElreath, a Towson State University (Maryland) PR professor and author of a textbook on "ethical" PR campaigns, believes that many corporations were spurred to a greater focus on ethics by federal crackdowns on large defense contractors during the 1970s. The result of these efforts was that many contractors created codes of ethics.
Corporate PR executives' ability to advise management about the ethical dimensions of decisions and to communicate ethical policies to employees and the public are enhanced when they report "or at least have access to the CEO," said Wright. (Page, 303/215-1890; Wright, 334/380-2813; McElreath, 410/830-3803)
| Pr execs' assessment of corporations' ethics communication | |||
|---|---|---|---|
|
Are U.S. corporations more likely today than 10 years ago to tell the public that they have ethical standards? |
|||
| Agree | 82% | Disagree |
5% |
|
Does senior management in most U.S. corporations foster more trust today than 10 years ago? |
|||
Agree |
16% | Disagree |
64% |
|
Are policies on ethics and values being communicated more clearly to employees than they were 10 years ago? |
|||
| Agree | 71% | Disagree |
10% |
Source: Arthur W. Page Society/Don Wright