The Espoused Values of MNEs Operating in Colombia: Their Ethical Orientation and Stakeholder Consideration

To study the values espoused by top MNEs operating in Colombia, through their vision and mission statements, in order to interpret their ethical orientation and to examine their concern toward diverse stakeholders.

Content analysis – an analytical framework was crafted from the literature review, while allowing room for emergent phenomena. Thus a combination of deduction and induction was enacted.

Most values are either teleologically oriented or grounded in deontological values, with a significant amount of values that could be related to a virtue ethics. Regarding stakeholders, narrow definitions tend to prevail.

The comparability of the vision and mission statements could be affected because sometimes they are offered at the national level and others at corporate level.

By offering a critical regard at the values that are publicly espoused by some of the most influential companies in Colombia, we enhance the comprehension of the prevailing ethical environment and the compatibility with the principles of the Global Compact.

We have studied key actors in a growing emerging market, which could advance Global Compact principles. Besides we have crafted a pedagogic and systemic prism through which values can be taught and thought. Thus, the methodological and theoretical framework facilitates subsequent empirical research, both in comparative and longitudinal ways.