BUSINESS ETHICS AND CORPORATE PERFORMANCE IN THE BANKING INDUSTRY: A STUDY OF SELECTED BANKS IN THE SOUTH EAST, NIGERIA

Business ethics is not only important but also required in every business relationship involving different interest and goals. Most organizations strive to co-opt ethical management principles as established code of conducts to mould employees’ perceptions, attitudes and value systems not only to be morally sound but to gain competitive advantage against its competitors. Ethics is a core management tool employed to enhance the required value system within its operational system through logical positivism and conditional normativism. This study was designed to examine the direction and magnitude of the relationship between Business Ethics and Corporate Performance in the Banking Industry with focus on selected banks in the South East, Nigeria. The study employed a survey type of research of which correlational design was used to determine the degree of the relationship between the studied variables. Structured questionnaire designed in an open-ended questions were administered to the sample drawn from the population of the study. The study concludes that the employment of ethical management practices within their operational system would enhance their performance and therefore, recommends that financial institutions should view codes of conduct as an indispensable tool that must continually be evaluated in order to shape employees’ behaviours in an attempt to meet the demands of the changing environment.