Content analysis and assessment of international codes of franchising associations

The objective of this paper is to improve the knowledge about ethical content of franchising associations at a worldwide level.

To do this, the authors compared the content of 46 deontological codes of franchising associations from five continents to the standards established in the so‐called C‐40 or model of franchising deontological codes.

Results show that, in general, ethical content included in deontological codes of franchising associations is not very large, requiring progress in improving its structure and content. In any case, according to the contents of their deontological codes, there are two groups of franchising associations worldwide. On the one hand, those taking the archetype of the European Franchise Federation code (30 associations), which show a greater number of ethical issues and have a better structured code than the other group that do not follow the European code (16 associations).

Although currently the majority of franchisees and franchisors associations' have or are in the process of developing a deontological code, there is little knowledge about “how a good code should be”, “what is the content it must include to perform properly” and if “existing codes of franchise associations are appropriated”. The answer to these questions, given the existing gap in the literature, is the value of this work.