Corporate governance and organisational culture: the role of ethics officers

Abstract

We argue that ethical leadership must be in line with corporate governance in general and of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) who must be the starting point for the rest of the organisational members to have an ethical guideline to follow. Nevertheless, we argue that the figure of the Ethics Officer (EO) is the connecting link between ethical values of Corporate Governance, CEOs and those of the other staff. With this idea in mind, we present the characteristics an EO must have, and reach the conclusion that organisational ethical values cannot be imposed. Instead, they must be managed through a corporate governance ethical culture, so this term will be the focus of the paper.