CORPORATE ETHICS SIGNING EFFICIENCY
Corporate Ethics; Signaling Theory; Economic Efficiency.
The objective of this study is to identify the relationship between corporate ethics and the economic efficiency of companies. Thus, based on the theories of Signaling and Agency, inferring that the implementation and disclosure of quality codes of ethics, besides being used as a risk control mechanism, is of fundamental importance to present greater credibility to the market, thus influencing the economic results of the companies. To this end, the quality of the codes of ethics disclosed by Brazilian companies listed on B3 in 2018 is verified, based on the scoring model proposed by Garegnani, Merlotti and Russo (2015), which portrays the quality these codes as met the criteria pre-established by regulatory bodies. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) will also be used to determine the economic efficiency score, based on information that reflects the results, being considered as Imputs, Current Liabilities and Expenses, and as Outputs, Current Assets and Revenues. Data were collected from the financial reports of the companies studied. Although studies focused on the quality of codes of ethics are scarce, this research contributes to the literature to confirm or not the theoretical statement, as well as to influence companies to pay more attention to the elaboration of quality codes of ethics that can influence both its credibility as well as its economic results.