Ethical issues in the companies' buying practice

Ethics is a critical element of business relationship. This is often narrowed down to corruption in the context of purchasing management, however it is a much more complex problem. Since the large scale research projects of the 1990s only a few studies have been devoted to investigate this topic. This paper aims to identify current ethical issues in purchasing and examines perceptions on ethical issues. A literature review, which helped in the questionnaire development, will be provided and the survey results will be presented. Results suggest that although the awareness of environmental and social aspects has grown, the perceptions of the existence of ethical issues have not changed in the last decades. An important message is that the hypernorms of multinational companies help to standardise ethical issues and link them to CSR and environmental aspects. Perceptions of ethical issues are likely to be affected by communication and professional knowledge weaknesses as well.