Attitudes toward codes of ethics: the effects of corporate misconduct

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Abstract
Recent news of corporate misconduct at Arthur Andersen, Enron, WorldCom, etc., has focused attention on ethics in business. Government, business, educational institutions, as well as professional organisations have had to rethink ways of addressing this issue. This article presents the findings of a study of attitudes toward business codes of ethics. The attitudes of Master’s‐level US business students at two different points in time, before and after recent reports of corporate misconduct, are compared to see what changes had occurred, to see whether these changes were linked to the disclosures of unethical corporate conduct, and to examine whether taking a course in ethics had an effect on attitudes.