WORK ETHICS IN ROMANIAN COMPANIES (I) - EMPRIRICAL EVIDENCES

Abstract

In many countries (e.g. Japan, China) it has been proved that a key-driven factor in increasing their economical development consists on employees’ attitude toward work. Based on the assumption, the main objective of this article is to compound a descriptive image on drivers and barriers on work ethic in Romania, which illustrate the most frequent ethical issues in firm-employee relation. In this respect, the sense which I attributed to the term “work ethics†refers to specific attributes of relationship between two parts: employee and firm and in the second paper I will use this term based on Weber’s definition as a belief in the moral value of the work. The empirical evidences presented here are the results of a research based on an online survey which I applied to managers and/or persons in leading position in Romanian small and medium enterprises. Using this methodological instrument, I collect responses from 828 companies from 41 different Romanian counties land. The resultants indicates that the main source of the unethical practices is based upon a double phenomenon: employees fail to comply with their labor contract duties and management administration restricts employees’ rights to work (applying discriminatory practices) and rights to a fair wage.