Ethical Leader Behavior and Big Five Factors of Personality

Most research on ethical leadership to date investigates the consequences of ethical leadership rather than its antecedents. Here, we aim to contribute to this field by studying leader personality as a potential antecedent of ethical leader behavior. In two multisource studies, we investigated the relationships between personality traits and ethical leader behavior. Leader personality was measured through self-ratings using the five-factor personality framework. Two subordinates rated their leaders’ ethical behavior. Study 1 used a uni-dimensional Ethical Leadership Scale (ELS). In study 2 we used this scale as well as an instrument distinguishing three different ethical leader behaviors, namely, fairness, role clarification, and power sharing. Further, in study 2 we controlled for the influence of the relationship between leader and followers (LMX). As expected, conscientiousness and agreeableness were most consistently related to ethical leadership. In study 1, after controlling for the other personality traits, conscientiousness related positively with ethical leadership. In study 2, after controlling for other traits and LMX, conscientiousness related positively with ethical leadership and the behavior role clarification, and agreeableness with power sharing and fairness. Also, emotional stability related positively with ethical leadership and role clarification after controlling for LMX. As expected, openness to experience and extraversion were unrelated to ethical leader behaviors.     

Corporate Social Responsibility and Ethical Leadership: Investigating Their Interactive Effect on Employees’ Socially Responsible Behaviors

This research investigates the interlinkage between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and ethical leadership in inducing employees’ socially responsible behaviors (SRBs). Specifically, building on organizational identification theory and cue consistency theory, we develop and test an integrated moderated mediation framework in which employees’ perception of ethical leadership moderates the mediating mechanism between their perceptions of CSR (i.e., perceived CSR–environment and perceived CSR–community), organizational identification, and SRBs (i.e., green and societal behaviors). The findings highlight the need for consistency between employees’ perceptions of CSR and ethical leadership to foster their propensity to further social good through relationship-building activities with their organization. The results, which largely verify the theoretical framework, contribute to and have implications for both research and practice.     

Economic rationality and ethical behaviour: ethical business between venality and sacrifice

This paper argues that economic rationality and ethical behavior cannot be reduced one to the other, thus casting doubt on the validity of assertions such as 'profit is ethical' or 'ethics pays'. In order to express ethical dilemmas in a way which opposes economic interest with ethical concerns, we propose a model of rational behavior that combines these two irreducible dimensions in an open but not arbitrary manner. Behaviors that are neither ethical nor profitable are considered irrational (non-arbitrariness). However, behaviors that are profitable but unethical, and behaviors that are ethical but not profitable, are all treated as rational (openness). Combining ethical concerns with economic interest, ethical business is in turn seen as an optimal form of rationality between venality and sacrifice. Because everyone prefers to communicate that they act ethically, ethical business remains ambiguous until some economic interest is actually sacrificed. We argue, however, that ethical business has an interest in demonstrating its consistency between communication and behavior by a transparent attitude. On the other hand, venal behaviors must remain confidential to hide the corresponding lack of consistency. This discursive approach based on transparency and confidentiality helps to further distinguish between ethical and unethical business behaviors.     

Looking at Consumer Behavior in a Moral Perspective

The paper suggests that consumers and their behaviors deserve (much) more attention in our field. After a few website references (about ethical shopping and ethical trade initiatives) and after a brief literature review of recent business ethics and consumer behavior literature conceptual frameworks are suggested. As an open end, the paper contains some empirical references, related to consumer honesty, tax loyalty and to motives for buying organic food, and suggests the development of a consumer morality measurement instrument.     

The Third Eye: Exploring Guanxi and Relational Morality in the Workplace

We examine the use of Confucian relational morality as an alternative reference point to that of modernist morality in judging workplace ethical conduct. A semi-structured interview based study involving 46 ethnic Chinese managers and 30 non-Chinese expatriate managers in Singapore, provided evidence of the use of traditional guanxi-linked morality as a moral resource by some of the former group in judging workplace ethical dilemmas. While such morality played only a minor role in moral reasoning, and was largely overshadowed by modernist morality, the research nonetheless demonstrates that moral reasoning reflects wider cultural heritage, and is not merely a function of corporate culture and individual moral development.     

The Need to Give Gratuitously: A Relevant Concept Anchored in Catholic Social Teaching to Envision the Consumer Behavior

The “gift exchange theory” articulated by Marcel Mauss, along with his core concept of a threefold obligation (giving/receiving/returning), is the dominant theoretical framework used to explain the majority of gift issues in marketing. This perspective assumes that some interest always lies behind gifts, such that a gift always implies a counterpart of receiving something in return. Despite the relevance of this approach in understanding the day-to-day consumer behavior, this paper presents empirical cases where the consumer is also able to give freely, that is to say without implying a counterpart or even expecting it. To explain those empirical cases, we mobilize a key teaching of the Catholic Church: the “gratuitous gift” and then introduce the concept of the “need to give.” We show that gratuitousness is a relevant concept to understand most of gifts made by consumers, and we develop the normative aspect of gratuitous gift for ethical marketers (i.e., what ethical marketers should consider to understand consumers properly and in a more humanistic way). We also show that Catholic Social Teaching offers an appropriate anthropology to understand consumer behaviors motivated by this need for gratuitousness. To conclude, we propose further avenues of research.     

Business Cases and Corporate Engagement with Sustainability: Differentiating Ethical Motivations

This paper explores links between different ethical motivations and kinds of corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities to distinguish between different types of business cases with regard to sustainability. The design of CSR and corporate sustainability can be based on different ethical foundations and motivations. This paper draws on the framework of Roberts (Organization 10:249–265, 2003) which distinguishes four different ethical management versions of CSR. The first two ethical motivations are driven either by a reactionary concern for the short-term financial interests of the business, or reputational, driven by a narcissistic concern to protect the firm’s image. The third responsible motivation works from the inside-out and seeks to embed social and environmental concerns within the firm’s performance management systems, and the fourth, a collaborative motivation, works to bring the outside in and seeks to go beyond the boundaries of the firm to create a dialogue with those who are vulnerable to the unintended consequences of corporate conduct. Management activities based on these different ethical motivations to CSR and sustainability result in different operational activities for corporations working towards sustainability and thus have very different effects on how the company’s economic performance is influenced. Assuming that corporate managers are concerned about creating business cases for their companies to survive and prosper in the long term, this paper raises the question of how different ethical motivations for designing CSR and corporate sustainability relate to the creation of different business cases. The paper concludes by distinguishing four different kinds of business cases with regard to sustainability: reactionary and reputational business cases of sustainability, and responsible and collaborative business cases for sustainability.     

Exploring the unintended negative impact of an ethical climate in competitive environments

To attain short-term performance, sales managers must motivate their salesforce to close deals (often through use of intra-firm competition). At the same time, to maintain long-term relationships, they must promote a highly ethical selling environment (which may be incongruent with use of intra-firm competition). The present study examines the interactive relationship between competitive psychological climate and ethical psychological climate in predicting salespeople’s ethical intentions and behaviors toward customers. A unique dyadic data set is used to predict salesperson ethical intentions and actual salesperson ethical behaviors reported by customers. For ethical intentions, an “executive control” perspective predicts improved ethical intentions toward customers. However, a “depletion” perspective predicts reduced ethical behavior during actual customer interactions. This result is provocative as fostering an ethical climate in conjunction with a competitive climate is found to reduce ethical behaviors in the eyes of customers, a finding clearly counter to what managers intend.     

Is Your Banker Leaking Your Personal Information? The Roles of Ethics and Individual-Level Cultural Characteristics in Predicting Organizational Computer Abuse

Computer abuse (CA) by employees is a critical concern for managers. Misuse of an organization’s information assets leads to costly damage to an organization’s reputation, decreases in sales, and impositions of fines. We use this opportunity to introduce and expand the theoretic framework proffered by Thong and Yap (1998) to better understand the factors that lead individuals to commit CA in organizations. The study uses a survey of 449 respondents from the banking, financial, and insurance industries. Our results indicate that individuals who adhere to a formalist ethical perspective are significantly less likely to engage in CA activities than those following a utilitarian ethical framework. In addition, the results provide evidence that employees with individualistic natures are linked to increased CA incidents, whereas collectivist tendencies are associated with decreases in CA behaviors. Our results also show that collectivism acts as a strong moderator that further decreases the relationships between formalism and CA, and utilitarianism and CA. Finally, we offer detailed suggestions on how organizations and researchers can leverage our findings to decrease CA occurrences.     

Trust and Dialogue: Theoretical Approaches to Ethics Auditing

The aim of this paper is to put forward an ethical framework for the conceptualization and development of ethics audits, here understood as a catalyst for company dialogue and in general, for management of ethics in the company. Ethics auditing is understood as the opportunity and agreement to devise a system to inform on ethical corporate behavior. This system essentially aims to increase the transparency and credibility of the companys commitment to ethics. At the same time, the process of elaborating this system allows us to introduce the moral dimension into company actions and decisions, thereby completing a key dimension of the production, maintenance and development of trust capital. To this end, the following four steps are taken. First, we analyze the relation between ethics auditing and trust as a basic moral resource in the dialogue between the company and its various stakeholders. Second, we examine the social balance sheet as a precursor to ethics auditing and focus on what prevents it from going further. Third, we attempt to reconstruct the basic moral assumptions underlying the companys social responsibility from the discourse ethics approach. Finally, we present a methodological framework from which to carry out our proposal, which embraces two basic theoretical perspectives stakeholder theory and the values derived from discourse ethics as a normative framework.     

Downsizing and Ethics of Personnel Dismissals — The Case of Finnish Managers

The purpose of our article is to present a qualitative empirical study from the ethical viewpoint. It aims at the theoretical conceptualization concerning the managers' decision-making of personnel dismissals in downsizing organizations. First we present and seek to motivate our research task. The importance of real business ethical issues as a starting point of business ethics research is emphasized. Second the main normative ethical theories and ethical decision-making models are presented. These form the loose framework for describing and interpreting research interviews. After this the empirical findings are set forth. This part suggests that the managers explain the dismissals from different decision-making roles emphasizing different ethical orientation. The roles are called a rational and an independent manager, a marionette and an emotional individual. Our study suggests that the role of empathy in morality reveals an interesting and a necessary research topic for business ethics research.     

An Emotion-Based Model of Salesperson Ethical Behaviors

Academic research studies examining the ethical attitudes and behaviors of salespeople have produced several frameworks that explore the ethical decision-making processes to which salespeople adhere when faced with ethical dilemmas. Past literature enriches our understanding; however, a critical review of the relevant literature suggests that an emotional route to salesperson ethical decision-making has yet to be explored. Given the fact that individuals?? emotional capacities play an important role in decision-making when faced with an ethical dilemma, there is a need for empirical research in this area. We address this issue by outlining and testing an emotion-based model to study the ethical attitudes and behaviors of salespeople in a relational selling context. Building on the cognitive-affective model proposed by Gaudine and Thorne (J Bus Ethics 31:175?C187, 2001), we outline a framework that incorporates higher order prosocial emotions: capacity for concern and capacity for guilt. We include salesperson??s role clarity within the organization as a moderator to examine person?Csituation interaction.     

论自我利益与社会利益间的博弈

2008年发生了太多的事件,三聚氰胺等食品安全事件、美国家乐福踩踏事件、湖南郴州腐败案等。每一个事件都不得不让人思考:人究竟需要什么?人为什么会产生这样或那样的行为?同样的需求,为何人们表现出千差万别的行为?以马斯洛需求层次理论为代表的传统理论似乎不能解释这一切。笔者尝试着通过对大量的实例分析及结合多种理论来论述人们产生这样或那样的行为是由于自我利益与社会利益间的博弈结果。     

“This Position Requires Some Alteration of Your Brain”: On the Moral and Legal Issues of Using Neurotechnology to Modify Employees

Employers have long had programs for improving employee attitude and performance, from the simple such as free coffee in the break room to the more extensive such as gyms, counseling, team-building seminars, and skills training. Employees have also long used techniques for making themselves more competitive and productive for purposes of securing new positions or promotions. But what about more direct means of altering employee performance? Neurotechnology could allow for more powerful and precise methods of screening for desired traits and for modifying abilities—from memory to motivation to morality. In this paper, we examine the moral and legal issues of using neurotechnology in the employment context. We identify major types of technologies, the areas of employment where they might be used, and the moral and legal principles most likely to frame debates about use. We do not recommend a specific moral judgment but instead introduce the issues, describe the major possible policies that could be implemented to deal with employment neurotechnology, compare those policies to current ones, and lay out an analytical framework for further discussion based on the broad effectiveness of neurotechnology, balancing interests of employers and employees, and existing ethical and legal principles.     

Are Investors Willing to Sacrifice Cash for Morality?

The paper uses questionnaire responses provided by a sample of ethical investors to investigate willingness to sacrifice ethical considerations for financial reward. The paper examines the amount of financial reward necessary to cause an ethical investor to accept a switch from good ethical performance to poor ethical performance. Conjoint analysis is used to allow quantification of the utilities derived from different combinations of ethical and financial performance. Ethical investors are shown to vary in their willingness to sacrifice ethical for financial performance, and hence to display more heterogeneity than the all-encompassing ‘ethical’ label implies. Because of the existence of sub-groups of ethical investors with different attitudes towards financial reward, an attempt has been made to associate observable investors’ characteristics with their level of willingness to trade-off morality for cash. One sub-group of investors in particular appears highly resistant to the idea of accepting higher financial return as compensation for poor ethical performance. This unwillingness casts doubt on Jensen and Meckling’s widely reported claim that trade-off behaviour is ubiquitous in all areas of life.     

Does green morality lead to collaborative consumption behavior toward online collaborative redistribution platforms? Evidence from emerging markets shows the asymmetric roles of pro-environmental self-identity and green personal norms

The collaborative consumption toward online collaborative redistribution platforms can potentially ease sustainability problems. Although it has attracted the attention from academics and practitioners, research on its determinants and influencing mechanism is limited. This study develops an integrated theoretical framework to explore the impact of green morality and platform quality as potentially essential yet previously unexamined antecedents of collaborative consumption behavior toward online collaborative redistribution platforms. A questionnaire survey was conducted in a crucial emerging market, and consumer responses were assessed using a structural equation model. The results reveal that the green morality motive (i.e., pro-environment self-identity and green personal norms) and platform quality are determinants of collaborative consumption behavior. Second, platform quality moderate the relationship between green personal norms and attitude. Accordingly, the asymmetric roles of pro-environmental self-identity and green personal norms as green morality components are revealed. Third, attitude and intention play mediating roles in the relationship between collaborative consumption actions and antecedents. Finally, implications for both research and practice are discussed.     

The cynicism of consumer morality

Based on an empirical analysis of a yearlong netnography of a Swedish online fashion community, and the explication of the concept of modern cynicism, this paper develops a novel perspective on consumer morality. The analysis suggests that modern cynicism informs consumers of the reasonableness in consciously stating one type of morality while acting out another, in order to handle the morally conflicting demands put on them by contemporary consumer culture. The contribution of the paper is mainly threefold: (i) it conceptualizes instances of consumer morality as a form of consumer cynicism; (ii) it advances our understanding of consumer morality by showing how instances of consumer morality are articulated through cynical discursive practices, steeped in an enlightened disbelief in: the market, the other consumer and the self; and (iii) it shows that consumer cynicism, as enlightened critique, does not necessarily constitute an effective form of resistance. It is concluded that we may observe yet another type of morality developing within contemporary consumption, markets and culture: a morality of cynicism where consumers, actors and organizations not only find something healthy, but also something right or good in a cynical reason.     

Learning What It Really Costs: Teaching Business Ethics With Life-Cycle Case Studies

Sustainability informs the framework for a seminar that we teach for junior and senior undergraduates entitled "The Ethics and Economics of Sustainable Societies." One of the class requirements has each student research and write a life-cycle case study, an exercise in which they trace the full, or partial, life-cycle of some product with which they are familiar. Students are expected to examine the economic, ethical, and ecological implications along each step in the life-cycle of the product. We believe that life-cycle cases in general are very helpful in revealing the full economic, ethical, and ecological consequences of product development, marketing, use, and disposal. We also believe that asking students to research the product themselves provides additional pedagogical benefits. After a brief review of the philosophical case for our alternative view of corporate social responsibility, we will describe the life-cycle case method, offer several examples from our own classes, and make the case for the pedagogical benefits of this approach.     

利益制衡——解决营销道德失范的良药

近年来假冒伪劣、虚假广告等不道德营销行为不时见诸媒体 ,营销道德失范问题日益成为人们谈论的热门话题。营销道德失范给咨询行业乃至整个社会造成了极为不良的影响。咨询公司营销道德失范是一个经济方面的问题 ,另辟蹊径 ,利益的驱动是产生不良营销行为的根本原因 ,为此引入第三方 ,建立利益制衡系统的解决思路。     

Stakeholder Mismanagement in Retailing: A British Perspective

This paper provides three brief cases of retailers who have, through what is interpreted as stakeholder mismanagement, brought major problems to bear upon those companies, and other stakeholder groups. The main cases examined concern a "free flight" promotion run by the Hoover company in the UK in 1992/3, the collapse of the Ratner'sretail jewellery chain, and wage realignments at British Gas in 1994.Synthesising these examples, it is suggested that: (1) All companies are expected to meet ethical norms in dealings with their stakeholders, regardless of whether or not they have specifically set out to cultivate an "ethical" image; (2) Stakeholder groups tend not to stand in isolation, but to interact; moreover, modern technology may well tend to increase that interaction; (3) The fall-out from stakeholder mismanagement is likely to be widespread, highly publicised, long lasting, and difficult to contain; (4) Prospect Theory, derived from economics and psychology, may be applicable in such cases. This broadly asserts that we are far more readily affected by dissatisfaction than satisfaction, and this is especially so if expectations have been raised. However, from an ethical standpoint, there is still virtue in pursuing high standards in dealings with stakeholders.