At least on the surface, more companies are making workplace ethics an issue. But just how ethical is the average American workplace?

For clues, we turn to the 2011 National Business Ethics Survey, from the Ethics Resource Center, a survey conducted every two years.  The good news: 45 percent of respondents said they witnessed misconduct in the workplace, down from 49 percent in 2009 and 55 percent in 2007. The most common infractions were misusing company time, abuse of resources and violations of Internet policies.

While witnessed infractions were down, reporting of infractions was up. The percentage of respondents who reported misconduct was up to 66 percent, up two percentage points from 2009 and 12 points from the 2005 record low. Reporting didn’t necessarily pay off, however, as 22 percent of those who reported said they experienced some form of retaliation, up from 15 percent in 2009 and 12 percent in 2007.

In addition, the percentage of people pressured to do something against standards crept up to near 13 percent and a record 34 percent voiced a negative view of supervisors’ ethics. From the survey, it would be easy to see the modern workplace as a Hobbsean, near-paranoid place, where few are trusted and many are scamming. Is it really that bad?

For more:
- here’s the survey site
- here’s a WSJ item

Related articles:
Survey: Compliance and ethics movement on the rise
5 tips to develop a culture of compliance