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Workers pressured to let ethics slip

Monday, September 26, 2005

Workers pressured to let ethics slip

One in four

employees say that they've felt pressure to compromise their organization's ethical standards and one in five has noticed colleagues break the law or the organization's expected standard.

These were the key findings of Ethics at Work: a national survey by Simon Webley, research director of the Institute of Business Ethics and Polly Dryden, former head of corporate responsibility at Pfizer UK.

But other results were more encouraging: around 80 percent of UK full-time workers feel positive about the ethical practices and standards at their workplace; four in five think business is always or frequently conducted honestly; and two thirds think the organization they work for lives up to its stated policies on corporate responsibility.

In the UK, 65 percent of workers say their organization has a written code or standard, compared to 73 percent in the US.

Source: Ethics at Work, published by the

's Institute of Business Ethics

Blogged on 2:24 AM by Upay