Abstract
The current environment of business and financial corruption in Spain has increased in recent years. In order to reduce the scope of this problem, the Spanish Criminal Code (L.O. 1/2015) has introduced codes of conduct and ethics to encourage a new culture of respecting laws for companies and employees. An Educational Innovation Group at the University of Extremadura has proposed a cross-sectional model to study ethics, in an effort to address concerns about the consequences of illegal acts in society and companies. Students in Business, Finance and Accounting are required to practice ethical decision-making through court judgments in order to develop “ethical competences”. These competences are included in the European Higher Education Area and the Official University Education in Spain, specifically in the Royal Decree 1393/2007, of 29 October through cross-sectional competences within the academic programmes. The results of the study show that a high percentage of students validate this methodology as a way of improving ethical decision-making skills at University that will be applied to future business practices.
Highlights
Due to recent Spanish business scandals between 2014 and 2015, the General Council of the Judiciary passed more than 4000 judgments related to business matters
This study highlights some examples of illegal acts from Spanish Criminal Law: a) Judgment 10/2015 of the Provincial Court of Pontevedra, in which a company is assessed for tax evasion; b) Judgment
In the framework of the recently amended L.O. 1/2015, of 1st July, which compels all companies to implement “special surveillance measures” based on ethical codes, companies are required to build a culture of respect towards the law through developing ethical codes
Summary
Due to recent Spanish business scandals between 2014 and 2015, the General Council of the Judiciary passed more than 4000 judgments related to business matters. These judgments have been published in a database held by the General Council of the Judiciary in Spain. They are organised into different sections, namely: unfair competition (1006), labour exploitation (1439), the use of public information for private purposes (356), tax falsehoods and inaccurate documentation (943), strategies for tax evasion (271), flight of capital (292) and biased economic information (94).
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