A Critical Analysis of the Accounting Industry’s Voluntary Code of Conduct

The public accounting industry’s voluntary code of conduct in the United States is the American Institute of CPA’s Code of Professional Conduct. Based on our analysis, we conclude that the accounting industry’s current code is limited in its ability to serve the public interest in three respects. Specifically, the code is input-based, requires no third-party attestation of compliance with the code, and contains no public reporting process of code compliance/noncompliance at the accounting firm level. We propose that the accounting profession should reorient its largely input-based Code of Professional Conduct to include output-based performance measurements. We also conclude that third-party attestation of compliance with the profession’s code would help to promote compliance. Finally, we maintain that the accounting industry should initiate a public reporting process at the individual accounting firm level. Such a requirement would add a degree of public accountability as to whether a firm complies or fails to comply with the industry’s voluntary code of conduct. John D. Neill, Ph.D., CPA, is a professor of accounting at Abilene Christian University and has previously published articles in numerous journals including the Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Accounting Literature, Accounting Horizons, Advances in Accounting,theFinancial Analysts Journal,and theJournal of Accounting, Ethics, and Public Policy. O. Scott Stovall, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of accounting at Abilene Christian University and has published articles in the Journal of Business Ethics, Management Accounting Quarterly, and Cases from Management Accounting Practice. Darryl L. Jinkerson, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of management and chair of the Management Sciences Department at Abilene Christian University and was formerly the Director of Assessment and Measurement for Arthur Andersen.     

Does East Meet West in Business Ethics: An Introduction to the Special Issue

This article introduces and summarizes selected papers from the first World Business Ethics Forum held in Hong Kong and Macau in November 2006, co-hosted by the Hong Kong Baptist University and by the University of Macau. Business Ethics in the East remain distinct from those in the West, but the distinctions are becoming less pronounced and the ethical traffic flows both ways. Gabriel D, Donleavy is Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Business Administration at the University of Macau teaching Business Ethics, Business Negotiation and Advanced Management. His work has been published in Critical Perspectives in Accounting, Corporate Governance, the Journal of Business Ethics, Advances in Applied Business Strategy, the Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, Long Range Planning and the Asian Review of Accounting which he co-founded. Kit-Chun Joanna LAM is Professor in Department of Economics of the Hong Kong Baptist University. She is also Guest Professor in the Centre for Business Ethics of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, China. She received her Ph.D. degree in economics from Harvard University. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Labor Economics, Canadian Journal of Economics, Economica, Journal of Comparative Economics, and Labour Economics. Simon S.M. Ho is Dean and Professor at the School of Business and Director for Corporate Governance and Financial Policy, Hong Kong Baptist University. He founded the Asia-Pacific Corporate Governance Conference and the world’s first master programme in corporate governance & directorship in 2004. He published over 40 academic refereed articles in leading journals such as Journal of Accounting, Accounting & Finance, Journal of Accounting & Public Policy, and Journal of Corporate Finance.     

Ethics Programs, Perceived Corporate Social Responsibility and Job Satisfaction

Companies offer ethics codes and training to increase employees’ ethical conduct. These programs can also enhance individual work attitudes because ethical organizations are typically valued. Socially responsible companies are likely viewed as ethical organizations and should therefore prompt similar employee job responses. Using survey information collected from 313 business professionals, this exploratory study proposed that perceived corporate social responsibility would mediate the positive relationships between ethics codes/training and job satisfaction. Results indicated that corporate social responsibility fully or partially mediated the positive associations between four ethics program variables and individual job satisfaction, suggesting that companies might better manage employees’ ethical perceptions and work attitudes with multiple policies, an approach endorsed in the ethics literature. Sean Valentine (D.B.A., Louisiana Tech University) is an Associate Professor of Management in the college of Business at the University of Wyoming. His teaching and research interests include business ethics, organizational behavior, and human resource management. He has published in journals such as Behavioral Research in Accounting, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, and Journal of Business Ethics. Gary Fleischman (Ph.D., Texas Tech University) is an Associate Professor and is the McGee Hearne and Paiz Faculty Scholar in Accounting at the University of Wyoming. His teaching expertise is in accounting and entrepreneurship and his research interests are in business ethics and behavioral business research. He has published in journals such as Behavioral Research in Accounting, The International Journal of Accounting and Journal of Business Ethics.     

Peers Versus National Culture: An Analysis of Antecedents to Ethical Decision-making

Given the recent ethics scandals in the United States, there has been a renewed focus on understanding the antecedents to ethical decision-making in the research literature. Since ethical norms and standards of behavior are not universally consistent, an individual’s choice of referent may exert a large influence on his/her ethical decision-making. This study used a social identity theory lens to empirically examine the relative influence of the macro- and micro-level variables of national culture and peers on an individual’s intention to behave ethically. Our sample consisted of respondents from Germany, Italy, and Japan. The results indicated that both national culture and peers were found to act as significant referents in ethical decision-making dilemmas. Although peers exerted a much stronger influence on an individual’s ethical decision-making, the impact of peers varied depending on the national culture levels of individualism and power distance. James W. Westerman is an Associate Professor of Management at Appalachian State University. He received his Ph.D in Management from the University of Colorado at Boulder and an MBA from Florida State University. His research interests include person-organization fit, compensation, and employee ethics, and has been published in the Journal of Organizational Behaviour, Journal of Business Ethics, Academy of Management Learning and Education, Group and Organization Management and the Journal of Business and Psychology, among others. Rafik I. Beekun (Ph.D., the University of Texas at Austin) is Professor of Management and Strategy in the Managerial Sciences Department at the University of Nevada. Reno, and Co-director, Center for Corporate Governance and Business Ethics. His current research focuses on business ethics, national cultures and the link between management and spirituality. He has published in such journals as the Journal of Applied Psychology, Human Relations, Journal of Management, Journal of Business Ethics and Decision Sciences. Yvonne Stedham is a Professor of Management in College of Business at the University of Nevada, Reno. She received a Ph.D. in Business and an MBA from the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas and undergraduate degrees in Economics and Business from the University of Bonn, Germany. She joined the University of Nevada, Reno in 1988 and served as Chair of the Managerial Sciences Department from 1999-2002. Dr. Stedham's research covers a broad spectrum of management issues with a special focus on international, business ethics and gender aspects, and has been published in the Journal of Management. Women in Management Review, the Journal of Management Studies, the Journal of Business Ethics,the Journal of European Industrial Training, and the Journal of Knowledge Management Practice, Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resource, and others. Jeanne H. Yamamura, CPA, MIM, PHD, is Associate Professor at the University of Nevada Reno. Her research is focused in the area of the international management of accounting professionals and in ethical decision making. She has published in journals such as the International Journal of Accounting, the International Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Performance Evaluation and the International Journal of Human Resource Management.     

Corporate Ethical Codes: Effective Instruments For Influencing Behavior

This paper reviews studies of corporate ethical codes published since 2000 and concludes that codes be can effective instruments for shaping ethical behavior and guiding employee decision-making. Culture and effective communication are key components to a code’s success. If codes are embedded in the culture and embraced by the leaders, they are likely to be successful. Communicating the code’s precepts in an effective way is crucial to its success. Discussion between employees and management is a key component of successful ethical codes. Betsy Stevens as associate professor of Business Administration at Elon University. Her academic interests are business and management communication, business ethics, international communication, and hospitality management. An active researcher, she has published more than 20 articles in refereed journals such as The Journal of Business Communication, Business Communication Quarterly, The Journal of Business and Technical Communication, Journal of Business Ethics, Bquest and the Journal of Employment Counseling. She has an M.A. from the University of Cincinnati and a Ph.D. from Wayne State University. As a Fulbright Scholar, she taught university classes in Tomsk, Russia and has also been on the faculty of the Australian International Hotel School in Canberra, Australia     

The perceived role of ethics and social responsibility: A scale development

Marketers must first perceive ethics and social responsibility to be important before their behaviors are likely to become more ethical and reflect greater social responsibility. However, little research has been conducted concerning marketers' perceptions regarding the importance of ethics and social responsibility as components of business decisions. The purpose of this study is to develop a reliable and valid scale for measuring marketers' perceptions regarding the importance of ethics and social responsibility. The authors develop an instrument for the measurement of the perceived role of ethics and social responsibility (PRESOR). Evidence that the scale is valid is presented through the assessment of scale reliability, as well as content and predictive validity. Finally, future research needs and the value of this construct to marketing are discussed. Anusorn Singhapakdi is Associate Professor of Marketing at Old Dominion University. He received his Ph.D. in Marketing. His has published in the Journal of Macromarketing, the Journal of Business Ethics, the Business and Professional Ethics Journal, the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, the Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management and the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science. He has presented papers at various professional conferences including the American Marketing Association and the Academy of Marketing Science. Scott J. Vitell is Associate Professor of Marketing and holder of the Phil B. Hardin Chair of Marketing at the University of Mississippi. He received his Ph.D. in Marketing. His work has previously appeared in the Journal of Macromarketing, the Journal of Business Ethics, Research in Marketing, the Business and Professional Ethics Journal and the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science as well as various other journals and proceedings. Kumar C. Rallapalli is Assistant Professor of Marketing at Troy State University. His research has been published in the Journal of Business Ethics, the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science and the Journal of Pharmaceutical Marketing and Management as well as various national and regional proceedings. His research interests include marketing ethics, health care marketing, international marketing and direct marketing. Kenneth L. Kraft is Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Tampa. He received his DBA in Management. He has published numerous articles on Business Ethics, Organization Design and Strategic Planning in Journals such as the Academy of Management Review, America Business Review and the Journal of Business Ethics. His current research interest centers on the measurement of moral intensity.     

Organization of work in the company and family rights of the employees

The duty to respect, protect and help the family rights is related very closely with the organization of work in the firm. This paper summarizes and illustrates, using mini-case studies, the relationship between the organization of work in companies and the family rights and duties of employees.Domènec Melé is the Director of Business Ethics Dept. at IESE (the Business School of the University of Navarra in Barcelona, Spain). He has a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Spain and a Ph.D. in Moral Theology from the University of Navarra, Spain.Before, he has been professor at the Polytechinc University in Valencia, Spain. His published works consist of several articles on engineering topics and more recently on Business Ethics and Social Teaching of the Church on economics and business.     

Ethical Leadership for the Professions: Fostering a Moral Community

This paper examines the professions as examples of “moral community” and explores how professional leaders possessed of moral intelligence can make a contribution to enhance the ethical fabric of their communities. The paper offers a model of ethical leadership in the professional business sector that will improve our understanding of how ethical behavior in the professions confers legitimacy and sustainability necessary to achieving the professions’ goals, and how a leadership approach to ethics can serve as an effective tool for the dissemination of moral values in the organization. Dr. Linda M. Sama is Director of the Center for International Business Development and Associate Professor of Management at Pace University’s Lubin School of Business. She earned her Ph.D. in Strategic management from the City University of New York and her MBA in International Finance from McGill University. She was awarded the 1999 Lasdon Dissertation Award for her doctoral dissertation on corporate social response strategies and the Abraham Briloff Award of Best Paper in Business Ethics at the City University of New York in 1998. Dr. Sama made a transition to academe after a lengthy career in industry, where she acted as Director of Market Planning and Logistics for a major international subsidiary of Transamerica Corporation. She teaches primarily in the areas of International Business, Strategic Managements and Business Ethics, and has taught at Baruch College and the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) prior to coming to Pace in the fall of 2001. At UTEP, she was designated as the Skno International Business Ethics Scholar from 1999–2001. She has published numerous articles and book chapters that address issues of corporate social responsibility, business and the natural environment, integrative social contracts theory, and business ethics dilemmas in the new economy. Her research appears in journals such as The Journal of Business Ethics, Business Ethics Quarterly, Business and Society Review, The Journal of Cross-Cultural Management, and the International Journal of Value-Based Management. She has also published research for the U.S. Department of Transportation related to the effects of NAFTA on U.S. – Mexico border logistics and has consulted to business clients on Strategic Planning, Global Leadership and Business Ethics. Dr. Victoria Shoaf is an Associate Professor and Assistant Chair of the Department of Accounting and Taxation at St. John’s University. She received her Ph.D. in Business, with a specialization in Accounting, from Baruch College of the City University of New York in 1997; she was awarded the 1997 Lasdon Dissertation Award. Prior to joining St. John’s University on a full-time basis, Dr.Shoaf worked for over fifteen years in the retail industry with merchandising firms. Her expertise is in establishing effective accounting systems and controls, including operational functions such as order entry and fulfillment, inventory control, point-of-sale data transfers and sales audit, as well as financial accounting functions. She has held controllership positions at Laura Ashley, Inc., Greeff Fabrics, Inc., and Tie Rack, Inc. While working in industry and while completing her doctoral degree, Dr. Shoaf taught accounting courses as an adjunct instructor at Pace University and at Baruch College. She received a commendation from the dean at Pace University for teaching excellence, and she was awarded a Graduate Teaching Fellowship at Baruch College. She currently serves on several professional committees, and she has provided consulting services in accounting education and training programs for several large employers.     

Assessing the application of cognitive moral development theory to business ethics

Cognitive moral development (CMD) theory has been accepted as a construct to help explain business ethics, social responsibility and other organizational phenomena. This article critically assesses CMD as a construct in business ethics by presenting the history and criticisms of CMD. The value of CMD is evaluated and problems with using CMD as one predictor of ethical decisions are addressed. Researchers are made aware of the major criticisms of CMD theory including disguised value judgments, invariance of stages, and gender bias in the initial scale development. Implications for business ethics research are discussed and opportunities for future research delineated.John Fraedrich is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Southern Illinois University of Carbondale. His areas of interest include ethical decision making and international marketing. He has published inJournal of Macromarketing, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Marketing Management, International Journal of Value Based Management, andJournal of International Consumer Marketing. Dr. Fraedrich is co-author of a textbookBusiness Ethics: Ethical Decision Making and Cases, Second Edition.Debbie M. Thorne is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Tampa. Her areas of interest include business ethics, social network analysis, and cultural issues in organizations. She received a Ph.D. in 1993 and has published in theJournal of Teaching in International Business and numerous conference proceedings.O. C. Ferrell is Interim Dean and Distinguished Professor of Marketing and Business Ethics in the Fogelman College of Business and Economics at Memphis State University. Dr. Ferrell was chairman of the American Marketing Association Ethics Committee that developed the current AMA Code of Ethics. He has published articles on business ethics in theJournal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Macromarketing, Human Relations, Journal of Business Ethics, as well as others. He has co-authored ten textbooks includingBusiness Ethics: Ethical Decision Making and Cases, Second Edition, and a tradebook,In Pursuit of Ethics.     

A validation and extension of a multidimensional ethics scale

Reidenbach and Robin (1988, 1990) proposed and refined a multidimensional ethics scale. This study replicates and extends their work by examining the generalizability of the scale beyond marketing to accounting, and to subjects from across the United States and other countries. Results indicate that, in general, the scale holds for this different sample and context. However, an additional utilitarian construct emerged in the current study as important for accounting academics in their ethical decision-making. We also found that when we refined Reidenbach and Robin's measure of intention to make a particular choice, a social desirability bias or halo effect was identified. Methodological implications for business ethics research are also presented.Jeffrey R. Cohen is Associate Professor of Accounting at Boston College. He is a C.M.A. and a KPMG Peat Marwick Faculty Fellow. His articles have appeared in theJournal of Accounting Research, Decision Sciences andThe Organizational Behavior Teaching Review. His work on Ethics has appeared inJournal of Business Ethics, Issues in Accounting Education, Management Accounting, andThe CPA Journal.Laurie W. Pant is Associate Professor of Accounting at Suffolk University. She holds an M.B.A. and a D.B.A. and an M.Ed. She serves on the editorial board ofIssues in Accounting Education. Her articles on Ethics have appeared inJournal of Business Ethics, Issues in Accounting Education, Management Accounting andThe Organizational Behavior Teaching Review.David Sharp is Assistant Professor of Accounting at University of Western Ontario. He holds a Ph.D. and an M.Sc. He serves on the editorial board of theJournal of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation. His articles have appeared inThe Midland Corporate Finance Journal andSloan Management Review.     

Understanding Insurance Customer Dishonesty: Outline of a Moral-Sociological Approach

Most consumer morality studies focus on consumer immorality, i.e. different types and degrees of consumer dishonesty or deviance. This paper follows this tradition, by looking at insurance customer dishonesty. For looking at insurance customer dishonesty in a wider perspective, the paper drafts a sociology of insurance customer morality, including outlines of micro-level, meso-level and macro-level moral sociologies of insurance fraud, as well as a discussion of moral heterogeneity and a critical understanding of deviance. As a next step a few empirical rsearch questions are formulated and illustrated with data from a Norwegian-German pilot study. Johannes Brinkmann has a Ph.D. in sociology and is a professor of business ethics at the Norwegian School of Management in Oslo. Most of his recent articles have appeared in the Journal of Business Ethics, Teaching Business Ethics and Business Ethics A European Review. He has also published a number of books, two of them related to business ethics (in Norwegian, 1993 and 2001). Patrick Lentz is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Marketing, Dortmund University. Paper presented at the 11th Annual International Business Ethics Conference in Chicago, October 21–23, 2004     

Toward the development of a multidimensional scale for improving evaluations of Business Ethics

This study represents an improvement in the ethics scales inventory published in a 1988 Journal of Business Ethics article. The article presents the distillation and validation process whereby the original 33 item inventory was reduced to eight items. These eight items comprise the following ethical dimensions: a moral equity dimension, a relativism dimension, and a contractualism dimension. The multidimensional ethics scale demonstrates significant predictive ability.Dr Reidenbach is the Director of the Center for Business Development and Research and Professor of Marketing at the University of Southern Mississippi. He is the co-author of two books on business ethics and has contributed numerous articles on ethics to various academic and applied business journals. Dr Donald P. Robin, Professor of Business Ethics and Professor of Marketing, is co-author with Dr R. Eric Reidenbach of two recent books (1989) on business ethics. Both books, Business Ethics: Where Profits Meet Value Systems and Ethics and Profits: A Convergence of Corporate America's Economic and Social Responsibilities were published by Prentice-Hall. Dr Robin is a frequent lecturer on business ethics and has written several articles on the subject for both ethics and business journals.     

Do the Numbers Add Up to Different Views? Perceptions of Ethical Faculty Behavior Among Faculty in Quantitative Versus Qualitative Disciplines

Faculty across a wide range of academic disciplines at 89 AASCB-accredited U.S. business schools were surveyed regarding their perceptions of the ethical nature of faculty behaviors related to undergraduate course content, student evaluation, educational environment, research issues, financial and material transactions, and social and sexual relationships. We analyzed responses based on whether instruction in the academic discipline focused mainly on quantitative topics or largely on qualitative issues. Faculty who represented quantitative disciplines such as accounting and finance (n = 383) were more likely to view behaviors such as selling complimentary textbooks and grading on a strict curve as more ethical than faculty representing more qualitative disciplines such as management and marketing (n = 447). In contrast, faculty in quantitative disciplines were more likely to view behaviors such as showing controversial media and bringing up sexual or racial charged matters as less ethical than their counterparts. Whereas these differences may be attributed to the respondents’ academic backgrounds, the large level of agreement on ethical behaviors raises questions about the growing influence of business disciplines that operate within more unified research and teaching paradigms. Linda Kidwell (PhD, Louisiana State University) is an associate professor in the Accounting Department at the University of Wyoming where she teaches auditing as well as accounting ethics. Her research interests include academic ethics, auditing ethics, and governmental auditing. Her research has been published in the Journal of Business Ethics, Teaching Business Ethics, CPA Journal, Journal of Accounting and Public Policy and elsewhere. She has taught in the United States, Australia, and Canada. She has also been a frequent faculty mentor in the National Conference on Ethics in America held annually at the United States Military Academy (West Point). Roland Kidwell (PhD, Louisiana State University) is an associate professor in the Management and Marketing Department at the University of Wyoming where he teaches courses in new ventures, human resource management and general management. His current research interests include ethical issues involving family businesses and new ventures, social entrepreneurship, and workplace deviance such as withholding effort (free riding, shirking, social loafing) in organizational contexts. He is co-editor of a book of readings and cases, Managing Organizational Deviance (2005, Sage), and his research has appeared in Academy of Management Review, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Management, Journal of Business and Psychology and elsewhere.     

Gender differences in determining the ethical sensitivity of future accounting professionals

This paper explores possible connections between gender and the willingness to tolerate unethical academic behavior. Data from a sample of 285 accounting majors at four public institutions reveal that females are less tolerant than males when questioned about academic misconduct. Statistically significant differences were found for 17 of 23 questionable activities. Furthermore, females were found to be less cynical and less often involved in academic dishonesty. Overall, the results support the finding of Betz et al. (1989) that the gender socialization approach dominates the structural approach. Elsie Coker Ameen is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Business at Coker College. Professor Ameen has published articles in The Journal of Business Finance and Accounting, Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory, Review of Financial Economics, and other journals. Daryl M. Guffey is an assistant professor at East Carolina University. He joined the faculty at East Carolina University in 1995. Dr. Guffey has published several articles in such journals as The Financial Review, Journal of Business Finance and Accounting, Review of Financial Economics, Quarterly Journal of Business and Economics, and The Accounting Educators' Journal. Professor Guffey's research has been supported by a grant from the Ernst & Young Foundation. Jeffrey J. McMillan, Jr. is an associate professor of accounting at Clemson University. He joined the faculty of Clemson University in 1990. Dr. McMillan has published articles in such journals as The Accounting Review, Advances in Accounting, Issues in Accounting Education, and The CPA Journal.     

Managerial Authority as Political Authority: A Retrospective Examination of Christopher McMahon’s Authority and Democracy

An introduction to the March, 2005 symposium “The Political Theory of Organizations: A Retrospective Examination of Christopher McMahon’s Authority and Democracy” held in San Francisco as part of the Society for Business Ethics Group Meeting at the Pacific Division Meetings of the American Philosophical Association. Jeffery Smith is an Assistant Professor and founding Director of the Banta Center for Business, Ethics and Society at the University of Redlands. His current research focuses on communicative ethics and the moral foundations of collaborative decision-making within economic organizations. He is also interested in the role of principles in moral decision-making and the extent to which principled decisions can be made in organizational contexts. Professor Smith’s writings have appeared in the Journal of Business Ethics, Business Ethics: A European Review, Southern Journal of Philosophy and in other journals. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 2000.     

On the antecedents of corporate severance agreements: An empirical assessment

This study of major corporations (n=481) provides an empirical assessment of the effects of several corporate governance variables (CEO duality, boards of director composition, officers and directors common stock holdings, institutional common stock holdings, number of majority owners) on the adoption of so-called severance agreements. A discriminant analysis indicates a significant multivariate function. Wilks lambda univariate analyses suggest that the percentage of common stock held by owners and directors and number of majority stock holders are the more robust discriminators. Dan R. Dalton is Professor of Management and Director of Doctoral Programs, Graduate School of Business, Indiana University. Formerly with General Telephone & Electronics (GT&E) for thirteen years, he received his Ph.D. from the University of California. Widely published in business and psychology, his articles have appeared in the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Business Ethics, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Business Strategy, Behavioral Science, and Human Relations, as well as many others. He is the co-author of Case Problems in Management, Applied Readings in Personnel and Human Resource Management, and the forthcoming Absenteeism, Transfer, Turnover: An Interdependent Perspective. Professor Dalton is also co-principal investigator working on a five year grant provided by the General Motors Foundation in the general area of personnel policy. Paula L. Rechner is an Assistant Professor in the area of Strategic Management at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. She received her Ph.D. from Indiana University in 1986. Her primary research interest is corporate governance; specifically, her work has focused on corporate boards of directors and board leadership. In addition, she has been actively involved in research projects concerning strategic decision making, corporate control issues, and improving research methodology. Her articles have appeared in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Strategic Management Journal, and Academy of Management Executive, as well as others.     

Some initial steps toward improving the measurement of ethical evaluations of marketing activities

This study reports on the development of scale items derived from the pluralistic moral philosophy literature. In addition, the manner in which individuals combine aspects of the different philosophies in making ethical evaluations was explored.R. Eric Reidenbach holds a Ph.D. in Business Administration from Michigan State University. At present he is a Professor of Marketing and Director of the Center for Business Development and Research at the University of Southern Mississippi. He has published a number of articles in different marketing journals. In addition, he is the co-author of several books on bank marketing. Dr. Donald P. Robin received his DBA degree from Louisiana State University in 1969 and is currently Professor of Marketing in the College of Business, Louisiana Tech University. His basic marketing textbook entitled, Marketing: Basic Concepts for Decision Making (Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc.), and his co-authored readings book, Classics in Marketing (Goodyear Press), were both published in 1978. He is the author of articles in a wide variety of topics that have appeared in such journals as the Journal of Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, Business and Professional Ethics Journal, The Journal of Business Communications, Journal of Business Research, and Academy of Management Journal.     

The association between corporate social-responsibility and financial performance: The paradox of social cost

It is generally assumed that common stock investors are exclusively interested in earning the highest level of future cash-flow for a given amount of risk. This view suggests that investors select a well-diversified portfolio of securities to achieve this goal. Accordingly, it is often assumed that investors are unwilling to pay a premium for corporate behavior which can be described as socially-responsible.Recently, this view has been under increasing attack. According to the Social Investment Forum, at least 538 institutional investors now allocate funds using social screens or criteria. In addition, Alice Tepper Marlin, president of the New York-based Council on Economic Priorities has recently estimated that about $600 billion of invested funds are socially-screened (1992). MOSES L. PAVA is Associate Professor of Accounting and the Alvin Einbender Chair in Business Ethics at the Sy Syms School of Business, Yeshiva University. His research interests include financial reporting and business ethics. He has recently published articles in the Journal of Accountancy, Management Accounting, The Financial Executive, and Journal of Applied Business Research. His first book, The Shareholder's Use of Corporate Annual Reports, was published in 1993. JOSHUA KRAUSZ is Gershon and Merle Stern Professor of Banking and Finance at the Sy Syms School of Business, Yeshiva University. His research interests are in the areas of financial analysis, ethics and social responsibility, financial accounting, options and derivatives, price behavior, capital budgeting and taxation. He has published in The Review of Economics and Statistics, The Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Accounting Horizons, Applied Economics, The Journal of Extractive Industries Accounting, and The Mid-Atlantic Journal of Business.