ÉTICA E RESPONSABILIDADE SOCIAL CORPORATIVA SÃO REALMENTE IMPORTANTES? UM ESTUDO COM FUTUROS E ATUAIS GESTORES DE EMPRESAS

Abstract

The role of ethics and social responsibility in business has been generating a significant debate in academic and managerial fields. Several studies have been done in the last two decades about the impact of ethics and social responsibility on the firms´ different stakeholders. There isn’t, however, a consensus about the level of importance attached to this issue. The objective of this study was to investigate the difference in the extent to which future and actual managers believe that ethics and social responsibility are important for organizational effectiveness, through a descriptive and quantitative research. The research had a total sample of 132 subjects, and 78 were undergraduate business students and 54 were actual managers. The results pointed that the actual managers perceived ethics and social responsibility as more important than the future managers did. At the end, the major limitations, conclusions, and future research suggestions were pointed out.