Business ethics is very important when it comes to the business of each individual company, and especially the role of business ethics in service companies (with emphasis on large trading companies analyzed in this paper) since these companies have a very large number of stakeholders and is in Ultimately, the application of business ethics is one of the factors that can affect employee and customer satisfaction. The aim of this paper is to investigate how the principles of business ethics are institutionally regulated and how they are applied in the daily practice of selected trade organizations. One of the aims of the paper is to present the results of a survey in order to gain a better insight into the application of the principles of business ethics in selected retail organizations, ie retail chains Tommy, Studenac and Konzum. The empirical part of the paper presents the results of a survey conducted in the period from March 7 to May 7, 2021 on a sample of 46 respondents. These are mostly people of younger age, secondary education and employees in sales (ie in stores). Respondents mostly think that business ethics is important, but they also think that the goal justifies the means, which is actually a very opposite answer. Respondents also believe that the application of the principles of business ethics contributes to the business success of the company, but still state that in the company is primarily important ethical attitude towards them, or employees. What is very worrying is the fact that a large part of the respondents feel that they are being pressured (which is directly related to the fact that employees in trade are most often employed on a part-time basis) and the fact that although a good part of respondents companies in which employees violate the principles of business ethics, did not report it to the competent authorities, nor to the competent institutions. Again, the reason is the fact that they are afraid because they are afraid of dismissal, which indicates that in order to improve the application of the principles of business ethics in companies, it is very important to improve working conditions for employees.