Benchmarking the moral decision-making strength of European biotech companies: a European research project

Biotechnology companies have been forced to take account of the social and ethical pressures which increasingly surround their activities. A research project was undertaken with the aims (a) of identifying the practices and procedures which companies put in place as a response to these pressures, and (b) of advising the European Commission on ways by which interaction between these companies and their stakeholders might be improved. Two questionnaires were administered, and although the response rate was not high a reasonably balanced sample was achieved. The results indicated that although there was a high degree of ethical awareness and a willingness to pursue an ‘integrity approach’ to decision-making as opposed to a ‘compliance approach’, companies on the whole lacked the institutional tools (codes of ethics, ethics training, and others) which would enable them to operationalise an integrity approach to corporate decision-making.