Economy & Business, Volume 13, 2019

Abstract: The paper presents results of a qualitative study on ethics in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Slovakia. It aims at identifying the best practices in developing business ethics in SMEs, and what needs to be done to implement ethics into the business practice and ensure that SMEs’ representatives would be willing to introduce ethics into their businesses. In order to gain a deeper understanding of how SMEs’ representatives perceive ethical issues that influence their businesses, the focus group method with a consecutive thorough in-depth analysis of the transcribed material was used for the purposes of this study. The research has revealed several new findings on the challenges of business ethics in SMEs. Interestingly, results indicate that Slovak SMEs’ representatives might not see themselves as subjects directly responsible for the development of ethics in their organizations, and they would consider implementing ethics only if the legislative conditions changed and it would pay off for them to act in an ethical manner.