Having these thoughts in mind, our aim is to create a synthetic model of code of
ethics, which could be considered a first step in guiding the companies, which are
to be found in a process of designing an ethical code of their own. The novelty of
this research is threefold: firstly, this model is extracted and conceptualized in a
theoretical, normative manner from the companies’ public disclosures on ethics.
Having its roots grounded in the current reality of the companies, this ethical code
model has three main advantages: (1) it avoids the inflexibility and the hardness of
a pure theoretical model, which only with great difficulty would be able to
anticipate all the possibilities and the implications on ethics that could arise in
practice, (2) it is very adaptive on every company profile, no matter the type, size,
activity sector etc., because this model creates a fundament that can ulterior be
adjusted in accordance with the specifications of every company in question, and
(3) considering the fact that this model can be tailored on every company profile, it
has no negative impact on the originality of the designed codes of ethics. Every
code which is created from this general model evolves naturally in accordance with
companies’ specific features and desired expectations, thus creating the premises of
variability among codes. Secondly, the novelty of this research comes from the
analyzing method of the content of code of ethics. We content analyzed the code of
ethics of the sample companies and we targeted the corporate policies, practices,
and attitudes towards ethics in accordance with the category of the interested
stakeholder, thus, we conceptualize an ethical code model which is stakeholderoriented
rather than company-oriented. Thirdly, the novelty of this research comes
from the practical implications that this study has on companies, as a similar study
does not exist in the previous literature.