Abstract

Of the recent trends in Corporate Social Responsibility within the business sector, the ethical conduct of
employees is one of the most challenging tasks facing organizations. Based on the theoretical framework of
agency theory and psychological contract theory, exploratory research was conducted among 229 managers to
identify the reasons behind employee misconduct in Thailand. The findings reveal that agency theory was the
dominating theory explaining the reasons behind serious unethical behavior by employees. The results indicate
that employees committed acts of misconduct because of greed, financial benefits, or other individual
motivations. As regards the ethics management approach adopted by organizations, it was found that companies
are employing compliance strategy with other various tactics to improve corporate governance. In order to
improve compliance, it is recommended for companies to improve management control system to minimize
wrongdoing and to be responsive to misconduct incidents. Organization development can be improved by
fostering desired corporate culture, religious and philosophical beliefs.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.