Voluntary Codes of Ethical Conduct: Group Membership Salience and Globally Integrated Marketing Communications Perspectives:

Multinational corporations' and global institutions' codes of conduct are criticized as being ineffective, often because they are not able to accommodate local ethical perspectives. This article identifies two key marketing aspects for addressing this issue: group membership salience which recognizes local identity factors and globally integrated marketing communications which deals with how firms integrate global/local messages. Building on these two aspects, a model of levels of identity is developed, research propositions are generated, and four prominent codes are examined using textual analysis. Various gaps in these codes are identified and on that basis implications for the further development of codes are drawn.