It has taken several years to build the database you can now find on the website of The Database of Business Ethics. And still, this database is an ongoing project: we continue to work on collecting codes from all over the world and from all kinds of enterprises. Currently, Dr. Erkens, Kate Verhoeff and Emma Snel are in charge of managing, updating and expanding this database. Thanks to a grant from the KNAW, blog posts about the database will be written every week. In these posts, aspects of the research and the data collection will be explained. 

Curious about Dr. Erkens, Kate Verhoeff and Emma Snel? Let’s introduce them!

Have you ever bought shoes from Adidas? If so, have you ever wondered where these shoes came from and who made them?

Products made by a company like Adidas have traveled a long way. People and companies  all around the world have put in effort gathering materials, putting them all together, controlling logistics and so on in order to accomplish the final product. Over the past 30 years, companies  started to account for the human rights of the workers in their global supply chains. Stockholders and societal debates have put moral pressure on companies to document their ethical values and principles. This has led to the introduction of so-called ‘codes of conduct’ for employees and ‘supplier codes’ for suppliers. Sometimes  companies add other ‘ethical documents’ like due diligence reports.

To clarify, here’s a concise definition of each of the documents to be found on the websites of companies.