Informal and Formal Institutional Measures of Business Ethics Implementation at Different Stages of Enterprise Life Cycle

During its activity, an enterprise passes through different life cycle stages, which differ in terms of management systems, formal structures, control systems, documentation of transactions, and number of procedural hurdles. Therefore, our main research problem focused on the differences in informal and formal institutional measures of business ethics implementation. We used the case study research methodology to explore the differences of informal and formal institutional measures of business ethics implementation at different stages of the enterprise life cycle. The pre-designed questionnaire was used to conduct face-to-face interviews with 40 managers who were in most cases also owners of the studied enterprises.