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This paper aims to analyse the role of the code of ethics as a critical element of responsible management and posits it as a tool that integrates ethics, sustainability and attention to stakeholders. This proposed tool can be a facilitator of integrated management of these dimensions.

A survey was developed to answer the research questions, and descriptive and factor analyses were carried out. A non-probabilistic sampling technique, purposive sampling, was used. The survey, sent by e-mail, was addressed to managers and decision makers of Spanish companies belonging to associations explicitly committed to corporate social responsibility and ethics; 73 questionnaires were answered. Statistical analyses were performed with SPSS 26.0 software.

The findings highlight that companies that are showing leadership in ethical management are using their codes of ethics as a key instrument in the business ethics strategy. Codes of ethics go beyond being a guide to ethical conduct to being an instrument at the service of stakeholder relations, sustainability and ethics. The keys that these companies agree on are the design of participative processes of responsible management, the multidimensional content of their codes of ethics and a code management oriented to generate a proactive ethical culture in the company.

This paper proposes a series of recommendations that may be useful to all those companies that wish to promote effective and integrative ethical management through their code of ethics, as much as if they already have one, as they are developing it.

This research highlights the role of code of ethics as an integrative tool for ethics, sustainability and stakeholder responsibility. For that, the keys that these companies agree on are the design of participative processes of responsible management, the multidimensional content of their codes of ethics and code management oriented to generate a proactive ethical culture in the company.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an analytical model that shows causal relationships between the amount and nature of information on strategies and the governance of city councils, as well as the contents of different dimensions of sustainability that are disclosed on the websites of local governments in big European cities. This model could reveal if the information is disseminated in a homogeneous and coordinated way and could improve the quality of the information, its coherence and its comparability.

The authors have designed a questionnaire with 75 variables from the Global Reporting Initiative proposal to specify information disclosed on sustainability. The level of information about each of these variables has been gathered by consulting the contents published on the websites of the 142 local governments in the sample. Finally the authors propose a model about the cause-effect relationships between the amount and nature of the information in different dimensions of sustainability on the websites of large cities’ local governments based on the structural equation modelling methodology.

The model obtained reveals that there is coherence in the sustainability information disclosed by large European cities on their websites. However, it is demonstrated that the relations between the amount of information about strategies and the dissemination of information on each of the dimensions of sustainability (economic, social and environmental) do not have the same intensity.

The proposed model can be useful as a reference framework to structure online information supplied in a balanced and comprehensive way. This conceptual model can suggest ways for sustainable improvements based on the experience of analysed local governments.