New trends in codes of ethics: Czech business ethics preferences by the dawn of COVID-19

Research background: The morality and sustainability depend upon the active engagement of all stakeholders. Businesses might have to observe minimum standards via their corporate social responsibility (CSR), but this does not imply any mandatory and enforceable requirements for their internal documents. Crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic magnify differences and might impact the perception and commitment to ethics and modify preferences. Purpose of the article: Since it is up to each and every business whether it will issue Codes of Ethics or Codes of Conduct (Codes) and how they will project ethical principles, values and concerns in them, it is both illuminative and instrumental to conduct a massive theoretical and literature, review, to identify five aspects for exploration of Codes: (i) human nature (ii) moral values (iii) ethical principles, (iv) reasoning and (v) sustainability pillars, and to perform such an exploration via a case study at the dawn of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: Based on a massive theoretical and literature review. five aspect for exploration have been identified and employed in a case study involving twenty Codes of the largest Czech businesses, while focusing on their preferences. This is to be achieved by a holistic advanced content analysis employing meta-analysis and manual Delphi method with Liken scoring by a panel of experts. Findings & Value added: The case study reveals that generally Codes prefer (i) Socrates perception of human nature. (ii) respect and responsibility as moral values, (iii) the principle of solidarity, (iv) social contract and deontological reasoning and (v) the sustainability social pillar. These findings demonstrate discrepancies and inconsistencies between and also within these Codes, which often paternalistically reject the multi-stakeholder approach that is needed to overcome COVID-19. This litigates for the appropriateness of this new methodology and encourages further longitudinal case studies entailing more jurisdictions and industries.

The COVID-19 as interpretation instrument for the content of corporate social responsibility and its reporting in the EU?

For over five decades, the modern concept of sustainability has evolved along with its implication in almost all spheres, including the engagement of businesses via their Corporate Social Responsibility. The EU has joined international UN endeavors and attempts to progress towards the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (“SDGs”). The EU regime for CSR and CSR reporting is a mixture of hard-law, soft-law and policy measures and has predominantly facultative features. Nevertheless, its backbone is Directive 2013/34/EU, especially Art.19a with a rather general wording about which the case law of the Court of Justice of the EU (“CJ EU”) has not yet developed. The organic shaping of the understanding and application of the CSR reporting has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and related crises translated in EU law measures. Arguably, the COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented stress test which has brought new light in the interpretation of the scope of CSR to be reported, perhaps it even takes it into a new dimension. © 2021, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Institute of State and Law. All rights reserved.

IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON THE CONTENT OF INFORMAL CSR REPORTING - A SET OF CENTRAL EUROPEAN CASE STUDIES

The three pillars concept of sustainability relies on the multi-stakeholder model and expects socially responsible behavior by each and everyone, including businesses. Their sustainable engagement is the outcome of by them generally freely assumed Corporate Social Responsibility ("CSR"). The EU has been following the sustainability trends and goals set internationally by the UN, including the Agenda 2030 with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals ("SDGs"). Nevertheless, the EU law requires CSR reporting only by certain businesses and does not go into detail regarding its compulsory content, see Directive 2013/34/EU, especially Art.19a. Large businesses admit to be in the reach of the Directive 2013/34/EU and satisfy their CSR reporting duty. However, in what quality is it satisfied during the stress test time? The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted almost all aspects of our life and its consequences for businesses and their conduct in Central Europe are massive and multi-faceted. As a precursor of the assessment of formal CSR reports for 2020 to be filed in 2021, a set of central European case studies regarding various industries was performed in the summer of 2020 to holistically and critically assess whether and how COVID-19 impacted their informal CSR reporting. A qualitative Delphi-method was used along with an automatic key word scanning and revealed a significant impact with various nature, intensity and patterns. If this is confirmed by the formal CSR reports to be filed within next 10 months, then it means that the COVID-19 pushes the content of CSR reporting into a new dimension.

Addressing the COVID-19 challenges by SMEs in the hotel industry – a Czech sustainability message for emerging economies

Purpose: Emerging economies have to address positive challenges such as sustainability, digitalization, entrepreneurial readiness and planning and behavioral strategies and negative challenges, such as corruption and bureaucracy. The COVID-19 pandemic hit all economies and arguably made hotel businesses that are from less typical emerging economies, such as the Czech Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), to deal with similar challenges to that of their counterparts from typical emerging economies. How do Czech hotel SMEs address the COVID-19 challenges and what sustainability message can be extracted from that with the relevance for not only businesses from emerging economies? The purpose of this paper is to explore how Czech hotel SMEs address the COVID-19 challenges and what sustainability. Design/methodology/approach: A consolidated parsing of the literature, legislative and analytical framework, along with an investigative case study of 11 Czech hotel SMEs was performed, based on the questionnaire survey and semi-structured in-depth direct interviews. The holistic thematic analysis processed this fresh data and allowed Socratic questioning and glossing while addressing both research questions. Findings: The performed case study reveals that typical challenges faced by entrepreneurs in emerging economies became, via COVID-19, universal challenges, these challenges are a valuable impulse for digitalization and changes of entrepreneurial strategies, but not so much for sustainability, and the omnipresent negative impact of corruption and bureaucracy. Originality/value: This paper presents a pioneering study regarding the addressing COVID-19 and sustainability concerns by SMEs in a less typical emerging economy and offering a universal, partially comparative and sadly not so sustainable, message which is not just limited to emerging economies. © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited.

The Willingness of Generation Z to Financially Support CSR - A Central European Study

Sustainability, with its three pillars, is projected into Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and their effectiveness and efficiency depend upon the operation of the multi-stakeholder model. Both the EU and the EU member states depone clearly that, via CSR, we can exit from the COVID-19 crises stronger and better. The feasibility of the CSR depends upon the eager support of all stakeholders, including consumers. Therefore, it is highly relevant to assess whether the new group of consumers, known as Generation Z, is open to financially support CSR, to what extent and why and/or under what conditions. These three research questions became the foundation of a survey of 179 college students paying for their tertiary study at a private university in Prague. The survey included both closed and open question, brought forth a highly revealing and surprisingly consistent message about the conditional and rather generous readiness of this new generation of consumers in Central Europe, and led to a set of recommendations. © 2020 Radka MacGregor Pelikánová et al., published by Sciendo 2020.