Multiple Levels of Ethics Management: A Case of Airline and Hotel Firms

Abstract

This paper purports a multi-level ethics management model by integrating and examining past theories in the literature. The model has five distinct levels, with progression occurring among the levels. The study verifies the existence of the five levels of the ethics management model within the hospitality and tourism context by performing a structured content analysis of corporate ethics disclosure of large global airline and hotel companies. The results support the thesis that practices related to the levels of ethics management exist. The airline cases demonstrate more similarity and are concentrated primarily in Level 4 (the progressive ethical organization), whereas the hotel cases illustrate a larger variance, ranging from Level 3 (the emergent ethical organization) to Level 5 (the ethical organization). The study extends research in the business ethics domain while providing a conceptual framework for capturing ethics practices in hospitality and tourism organizations.