On Their Best Behavior

During a time of salary freezes and other cutbacks, one might suspect that employees are looking for ways to cut corners or seek personal gain at the expense of others, but surprisingly, the opposite is true. Only 8 percent of respondents perceived pressure to commit an ethics violation, which is down from 10 percent two years ago, according to the 2009 National Business Ethics Survey conducted by the Ethics Resource Center (ERC). These findings were in spite of the fact that 78 percent of participants reported that they or a colleague had been affected by company efforts to weather the U.S. recession.