Do Wealth Managers Understand Codes of Conduct and Their Ethical Dilemmas? Lessons from an Online Survey

Ewa Lombard () and Rajna N. GibsonBrandon ()
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Ewa Lombard: Montpellier Business School
Rajna N. GibsonBrandon: University of Geneva and ECGI

Journal of Business Ethics, 2024, vol. 189, issue 3, No 7, 553-572

Abstract: Abstract How do wealth managers understand and comply with the social norms embedded in banks’ codes of conduct (CoC), and how do they cope with ethical dilemmas? Do they have a tendency after the global financial crisis to prioritize banks’ financial security over clients’ interests? To answer these and related questions, we conduct a nonincentivized online survey with wealth management employees of the Swiss legal entity of a large multinational bank. We propose a method to estimate the comprehension and the level of expected adherence to the CoC principles that we test with our sample. We further show that framing questions under the label of “Financial Security” increased response accuracy and that employees’ honesty helped guide their decision-making toward integrity in ethical dilemmas. Thus, in addition to validating a method for testing the level of CoC comprehension and the expected adherence to its principles, our study is among the first to show that in the wealth management business, honesty and social injunctive norms defined in the bank’s CoC reinforce one another.

Keywords: Code of conduct; Corporate governance; Client interest; Financial security; Ethical dilemmas; Honesty; Online survey; Social norms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G21 G34 G41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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DOI: 10.1007/s10551-023-05372-6

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