After the fall of communism, the first non‑governmental organizations (NGOs) were established in Slovakia in the 1990’s. Since then, our NGOs have played an important role in promoting business ethics even though it was originally not part of their primary mission. Given that, we held semi‑structured interviews with the leaders of nine prominent Slovak NGOs to identify the perceived causes of unethical practices occurring in the Slovak business environment. The results of this qualitative research suggest that our respondents connect the causes of unethical actions in business mainly with the macro‑level of society, that is with the way the State with its institutions and authorities operate. Out of ten identified causes of unethical business practices, our respondents assigned five to the macro‑level, while they linked three reasons to the mezzo‑level with unethical conduct of companies and two to the micro‑level with unethical decisions of individuals. Since the government has taken measures to create a more ethical business environment recently, it is now up to companies to realize they hold the joint responsibility for the state of the Slovak society and to concentrate more on what they can do for their part in favor of the development of business ethics.

Voluminous growth of new ethics management elements in corporate practice implies the need to enrich its theoretical understanding. Most studies delineate ethics management conventionally as measures primarily applied for establishing ethical norms and employee compliance. Furthermore, many models are somewhat limited in scope and amount of presented practices and usually do not conceptualize ethics management functions beyond traditional compliance-integrity discussion. In addition, most models are not grounded in empirical research. With the aim to contribute to ethics management theory and bridge it with practice, this study employs a constructivist approach and maps best practices in ethics management via four focus groups with management professionals. Results suggest that ethics management can be viewed as a fundamentally participative and collaborative process, as a way of building relationships with external stakeholders, balancing structured planning and flexible change, and profoundly amalgamating with human resource management processes. Furthermore, in an Inventory of best practices encompassing 70 ethics practices, this study outlines nine functional subprocesses as key aspects of ethics management's practical implementation. As the research was conducted in Slovakia, this study provides unique information on the recent developments in ethics management in one of the post-transitional countries in the region of Central and Eastern Europe. | 55 LAŠÁKOVÁ et AL.

No abstract

No abstract

The authors perform a critical analysis of the answers of respondents from four focus groups focused on those practices of the State and State institutions which are perceived as unethical by entrepreneurs in Slovakia and thus negatively affecting the development of business ethics in this country. The article examines two questions: firstly, what the causes of the critical attitude of entrepreneurs towards the State as a body responsible for developing business ethics at the macro level are, and secondly, which specific activities of the State entrepreneurs perceive as unethical in terms of the development of business ethics.