Do you know how culture influences decision-making across your organization? Can you measure it and track it over time?

The Ethical Culture Index (ECI) translates Principia’s research into the drivers of ethical conduct and decision-making into a quantitative assessment and measurement framework, providing organizations with a robust, evidence-based view of the cultural factors that shape behaviour and performance.

The ECI helps organizations identify cultural strengths and vulnerabilities, understand the root causes that influence behaviour and establish a baseline against which progress can be measured.

At Principia, we believe effective culture change starts with meaningful insight. By turning culture and conduct data into actionable intelligence, organizations can focus effort where it will have the greatest impact and demonstrate whether interventions are working.

97% of leaders believe it is essential to monitor and track ethical culture, yet only 32% are building the capabilities required to do so. [Ethics Study 2021]

This is how we approach ethical culture measurement:

• Quantify culture – provide a quantitative assessment of the factors that influence ethical conduct and decision-making.
• Identify strengths and vulnerabilities – uncover the cultural factors that support performance and highlight areas requiring attention.
• Understand root causes – move beyond symptoms to understand the drivers of culture and behaviour.
• Track impact – establish a robust baseline to evaluate progress and measure the effectiveness of culture initiatives over time.

“Principia has been working with us to not only look at survey numbers but to drill down into why behaviour occurs. This approach to measurement gives us the basis for taking action.“

Marjolein Van Hellemondt, CCO, Santander

Ethical culture measurement in action

Following a significant conduct failure that damaged trust with regulators, customers and the public, a leading African financial institution partnered with Principia to understand the cultural drivers behind the crisis and chart a path forward. Through a comprehensive Ethical Culture Assessment, we identified key root causes, uncovered a shared purpose to unite the organization and provided the foundation for a two-year transformation programme. The resulting initiatives strengthened ethical decision-making, embedded values across 15,000 employees in 36 countries and helped position the bank as a recognised leader in purpose-driven, ethical business.

Read the full case study.