National Business Ethics Survey

The National Business Ethics Survey (NBES) is a unique and valuable instrument that measures how U.S. employees view ethics in the workplace. The survey's methodology is academically rigorous while its focus remains grounded in practical business ethics concerns. To help maintain this important balance, we recruit an advisory group of experts from business and academia. These advisors vet the questions used to gather data on a range of current and emerging ethics issues including: workplace pressures and misconduct, the modeling of ethical behavior by different employee groups, and the practice of ethical values within organizations.

The National Business Ethics Survey (NBES)® was first implemented out of the recognition that research was drawing on opinions of executive leadership or the types of practices in place to determine the ethics of organizations. Studies were not being done, however, to consider the perspective of those most impacted by the programmatic activity the employees themselves.

NBES was therefore born out of belief that:

• When an organization puts an ethics and compliance program in place, the end goal is usually to encourage ethical conduct in all its business activities5;
• If a program (regardless of its formality) is successful, attitudes and behavior throughout the organization will reflect a positive change in support of the ethical standards of the organization; and
• The full impact of a program cannot be adequately measured without taking into account the perspective of employees at all levels within the organization.
  These guiding ideas have remained constant in the NBES studies over the years. Central to this research is the notion that employee perspectives on ethics in their organizations truly matter, and through employees much can be gained in understanding what an effective program actually does.

Access to a full spectrum of employee views makes the NBES findings especially meaningful to those interested in benchmarking, monitoring ethics trends, and better understanding ethical practices within organizations. By giving voice to ethics concerns of employees at all levels, the NBES also helps to make management aware of the diversity of ethics perceptions within their organizations.