Reasons of Unethical Business Practices in Slovakia: The Perspective of Non-Governmental Organizations' Representatives

Abstract

After the fall of communism, the first non‑governmental organizations (NGOs) were established in Slovakia in the 1990’s. Since then, our NGOs have played an important role in promoting business ethics even though it was originally not part of their primary mission. Given that, we held semi‑structured interviews with the leaders of nine prominent Slovak NGOs to identify the perceived causes of unethical practices occurring in the Slovak business environment. The results of this qualitative research suggest that our respondents connect the causes of unethical actions in business mainly with the macro‑level of society, that is with the way the State with its institutions and authorities operate. Out of ten identified causes of unethical business practices, our respondents assigned five to the macro‑level, while they linked three reasons to the mezzo‑level with unethical conduct of companies and two to the micro‑level with unethical decisions of individuals. Since the government has taken measures to create a more ethical business environment recently, it is now up to companies to realize they hold the joint responsibility for the state of the Slovak society and to concentrate more on what they can do for their part in favor of the development of business ethics.