The ‘Trans-Atlantic Divide’

Abstract

"The purpose of this survey is to review corporate codes of conduct published by selected U.S. and European companies, with a view to exploring similarities and differences in the contents and style of these codes. The definition of codes of conduct used in this survey includes documents that give details on company values and culture, and state company position on expected employee behaviour vis-à-vis the company and each other, as well as other key stakeholders and the environment. The results of the survey show that there are a number of similarities but also noticeable differences in the codes, both between companies from different European companies, but more particularly between U.S. and European companies. For instance, the European companies tend to have a broader stakeholder approach, whereas many U.S. companies prefer to focus mainly on the workplace and the responsibilities of employees in protecting corporate assets. This indicates that European and U.S. companies apparently have different concerns and face dissimilar stakeholder demands on their social and environmental responsibilities. It is suggested that the development of codes of conduct is an evolutionary process, and that most U.S. corporate codes of conduct are still in a ‘first generation’ phase, whereas many European codes have evolved to later generation phases, partly due to more significant stakeholder pressure."