Proceedings

CORPORATE VALUES, THE COMPANIES’
FRAMEWORK OF ETHICAL BEHAVIOUR
Elena Roxana ANGHEL-ILCU 1
Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, Romania
ABSTRACT
This paper aims to find the corporate values that guide companies’ operations in everyday
activities and then to establish a general value system of the companies which we consider to
be a moral framework of ethical conduct. Our research is conducted in the European context;
we considered a sample that consists of British and French companies. There are few studies
related in the existing literature, and the opportunity of this research is justified through the
necessity of establishing the boundaries of corporate activity and decision-making under the
imperative of profit grows. The originality of this paper is the statistical apparatus that is
used in the aggregation of initial data. We consider that the company’s steps in the
identification of the inner corporate values after a selection process, is similar with a voting
system, more specific, a preferential voting system which permits to a company to give its
‘vote of confidence’ to a specific value and the ‘vote of no confidence’ to another different
value. A preferential voting system allows a hierarchical systematization between more
competing options and, thus, in our opinion, is more suitable for our goal rather than a
simple frequency determination. Our results present the corporate value system that is
applicable at the time present in a European context. We also confronted this value system
which is practiced in the British and French companies with a theoretical one formulated by
scholars. This has revealed that the existing corporate value system can be easily challenged
because of the lack of consistency and the significant number of weakness discovered.
KEYWORDS: Corporate Values, Corporate Value System, Preferential Voting System,
European Companies, Comparative Studies
INTRODUCTION
Knowing “what values we stand for” and “what values customers over time have
come to appreciate us for” is vital for the companies’ success. The values rooted in
the organisation need to resonate with the values perceived and appreciated by the
customers over time, and vice versa (Urde, 2009).
Bearing these thoughts in mind, our aim is to find the corporate values that guide
companies’ operations in everyday activities and then to establish a general value
system of the companies which we consider to be a moral framework of ethical
conduct. Our research is conducted in the European context; we considered a sample
that consists of British and French companies, a representative exhibit of two opposite
and paradigmatic accounting traditions: the Anglo-Saxon accounting system and the
Continental accounting system. There are few studies related in the existing literature,
1
Correspondence address: Elena Roxana ANGHEL-ILCU, Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest,
Romania; email: ilcu_roxana@yahoo.com
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