Management Ethical Principles and Ethical Behaviour in the Non-profit Organisations. Shaping a Causal Liaison or a Myth?

Abstract

In the non-profit field one of the major responsibilities of managers is to build a trustworthy picture of the organisations they lead, based on transparent ethical principles translated into the organisation's mission, governance principles, objectives, projects and day-to-day activities. Thus, management ethical principles should be a reflection of the moral requirements imposed by the Kantian categorical imperative, in order to ensure the organisation's survival, both by attracting donors and by creating and owning its own network of volunteer staff and paid staff, trained to meet the demands of a competitive and selective economic environment. Consequently, given the fact that staff (both volunteer and paid) resources of intellectual capital must be accompanied by ethical behaviour principles, used as essential tools to build an organisational culture of integrity, the main purpose of this study is to make a comparative analysis. Therefore, the investigation process relies on two major aspects: (a) the ethical principles promoted by managers in non-profit organisations; and (b) the way in which these principles are understood and internalised by the volunteer staff. Data presented in this paper results from the pre-test stage of a qualitative research project. The research objective of the study is to highlight the liaison between the ethical infrastructure provided by the non-profit managers to volunteer staff and the core ethical values embedded into volunteers’ behaviour.