A Comparison of Ethical Perceptions and Moral Philosophies of American and Egyptian Business Students

This study compares business students fromEgypt and the United States in terms of theirperceptions of ethical problems, personal moralphilosophies (idealism, relativism), and theirperceptions about the importance of ethics. Aself-administered questionnaire was used tocollect data, in the classroom setting. Theresults reveal significant differences betweenthe business students from the two countries,which may be suggestive for variouscross-cultural business interactions. Theauthors derive some implications for businessethics instruction.     

New Insights into Ethical Leadership: A Qualitative Investigation of the Experiences of Executive Ethical Leaders

Ethical leadership has become a thriving research field. However, on reviewing previous research, we argue that several fundamental questions remain unclear and need further investigation. (1) Ethical leaders are defined as behaving ‘normatively appropriate[ly]’ (Brown et al., Organ Behav Hum Decis Process 97(2):117–134, 2005), but it remains unclear what this entails. What specific behaviours does an ethical leader show? (2) To date, ethical leadership has focused primarily on leader behaviour towards employees. Which stakeholders apart from employees are important to the ethical leader, and what kind of ethical behaviour does the ethical leader show towards them? (3) What are further antecedents and consequences of ethical leadership? We addressed these questions by qualitatively analysing interviews with 17, mostly Swiss, executive ethical leaders. The results indicate that executive ethical leaders care not only about employees but also about other stakeholders, such as customers, suppliers, owners of companies, the natural environment and society. Additionally, this study identified a broad range of executive ethical leaders’ behaviours towards these stakeholders, and, therefore, may function as a useful resource for future quantitative studies. Furthermore, we identified several antecedents of executive ethical leadership, for example ethical role models, business strategy and owner’s values, and consequences such as effects on other stakeholders than employees. Finally, our results shed more light on the processes of ethical guidance of employees. Managerial implications and avenues for further research are discussed.     

Controversial Advert Perceptions in SNS Advertising: The Role of Ethical Judgement and Religious Commitment

This study attempts to advance knowledge in the area of controversial advertising by examining the antecedents and consequences of controversial advert perceptions in the context of social media, and particularly social networking sites (SNS). Specifically, we explore how ethical judgement and religious commitment shape controversial advert perceptions leading to attitudes towards the advert, brand attitudes and purchase intentions. Our results indicate that when a SNS advert is judged to be ethically acceptable, the level of perceived advert controversy is lower. However, the impact of ethical judgement on controversial advert perceptions becomes significant and positive when intrapersonal commitment and interpersonal religious commitment are introduced as moderators. This result implies that the level of religious commitment changes the ethical judgement–controversial advert perceptions relationship. The results also highlight that controversial advert perceptions negatively influence attitude towards the advert. The study contributes to the limited knowledge on controversial advertising on SNS, yielding significant and relevant implications for academics and advertisers alike, in their effort to improve advertising effectiveness without offending or alienating target audiences.     

The Relationship Among Knowledge,Opportunity, and Ethical Perceptions: A Cross-National Investigation

The focus of this paper was to study the effectof prior knowledge and situationalopportunities on ethically questionablebehaviors among students of differentnationalities. A study was conducted toinvestigate the role and impact of thepredictor variables (knowledge and opportunity)on ethical perceptions toward copyrightviolations. The study also examined thedirect and the moderating effects of age,nationality, ethnic identity, gender, andeducation major. The research was conducted ona sample of 160 students of an Americanuniversity located on the U.S.–Mexican border. The results indicate that the predictorvariables, knowledge and opportunity,significantly affect ethical perceptions. Demographic variables like age, nationality,gender, and education major had no directeffects ethical perceptions. Different ethnicidentities, however, exhibited significantdifferences in their ethical perceptions. Onexamining moderating effects of the demographicvariables, younger respondents weresignificantly different from older respondents. Differences between the ethnic identityconstruct and nationality are highlighted. Implications of prior student knowledge aboutethical standards and expectations arediscussed.     

Communicating Ethical Values: A Study of Employee Perceptions

Communicating ethical values is a serious issue for a number of organizations. While ethical codes are useful, they cannot exist alone. Organizations must make certain codes reflect the ideals of individuals in the organization and the ethical expectations must be clearly communicated. This study examined the sources (people) and channels (ways messages were received) that affected how employees learned about ethics. Results showed that training and orientation programs were affirmed as sources of learning along with teaching others. Codes and handbooks were also identified as ways employees learned about ethics in their organization. Ethical issues were discussed more frequently with fellow employees than with supervisors suggesting that managers could be more proactive about discussing ethics with employees.     

Professionalism, Ethical Codes and the Internal Auditor: A Moral Argument

This paper examines the case of the internal auditor from a sociological and ethical perspective. Is it appropriate to extend the designation of professional to internal auditors? The discussion includes criteria from the sociology literature on professionalism. Further, professional ethical codes are compared. Internal auditors' code of ethics is found to have a strong moral approach, contrasting to the more instrumental approach of certified professional accountants. Internal auditors are noted as using their code of ethics to help resolve professional ethical dilemmas.     

Determinants of Perceptions of Cheating: Ethical Orientation, Personality and Demographics

A sample of 227 business students from the United States and Australia was used to evaluate factors that impact business students' ethical orientation and factors that impact students' perceptions of ethical classroom behaviors. Perceptions of classroom behaviors was considered a surrogate for future perceptions of business behaviors. Independent factors included age, gender, religious orientation, country of origin, personality, and ethical orientation. A number of factors were related to ethical orientation, but only age and religious orientation exhibited much impact upon perceptions of ethical classroom behaviors.     

Conceptualization and Exploration of Attitude toward Advertising Disclosures and Its Impact on Perceptions of Manipulative Intent

Significant research has been conducted in an effort to understand how varying elements of disclosures (e.g., size, placement, complexity) in advertisements impact consumers' abilities to understand and recall the disclosed message. Although it is important to research the effectiveness of disclosures, advertisers may have additional concerns if the mere presence of a disclosure impacts consumers' perceptions of the company, advertisement, or brand. Little research currently exists examining the notion of consumers' attitudes toward advertising disclosures or how they might impact the effectiveness of the disclosed message, attitude toward a given communication, or overall evaluation of the brand. We introduce the concept of attitude toward advertising disclosures and develop a scale to measure consumers' attitudes toward disclosed messages. The resultant 14‐item, multidimensional scale is then used to demonstrate how attitude toward advertising disclosures plays a moderating role in influencing consumers' perceptions of manipulative intent.     

Student Ethical Perceptions and Ethical Action Propensities: An Analysis of Situation Familiarity

Recently McCuddy and Peery (1996) have suggested that business students may not respond the same way to unfamiliar business ethical dilemmas as they would to more familiar academic ethical dilemmas. The purpose of this study was to present the same students with both unfamiliar business dilemmas as well as possibly more familiar academic dilemmas in order to examine this issue.Findings of the study revealed that students did not exhibit different perceptions of the unethical actions performed in the academic and accounting/business ethical vignettes. However, the students indicated that both they and their peers would be more likely to act unethically to resolve the dilemmas in the accounting/business cases than in the academic cases. This finding is troubling in that it suggests that students either feel less compelled to act ethically in business, or that they perceive that ethical standards in the business world are generally low when compared to their current educational environment. In addition, the students in the study maintained the same halo effect (i.e., the difference between an individual's perception of their likelihood of performing an unethical action compared to their perception of their peers' likelihood to perform the same unethical action) across the two types of ethical dilemma.     

A Model for Ethical Decision Making in Business: Reasoning, Intuition, and Rational Moral Principles

How do business leaders make ethical decisions? Given the significant and wide-spread impact of business people??s decisions on multiple constituents (e.g., customers, employees, shareholders, competitors, and suppliers), how they make decisions matters. Unethical decisions harm the decision makers themselves as well as others, whereas ethical decisions have the opposite effect. Based on data from a study on strategic decision making by 16 effective chief executive officers (and three not-so-effective ones as contrast), I propose a model for ethical decision making in business in which reasoning (conscious processing) and intuition (subconscious processing) interact through forming, recalling, and applying moral principles necessary for long-term success in business. Following the CEOs in the study, I employ a relatively new theory, rational egoism, as the substantive content of the model and argue it to be consistent with the requirements of long-term business success. Besides explaining the processes of forming and applying principles (integration by essentials and spiraling), I briefly describe rational egoism and illustrate the model with a contemporary moral dilemma of downsizing. I conclude with implications for further research and ethical decision making in business.     

Moral Repair in the Workplace: A Qualitative Investigation and Inductive Model

The topic of moral repair in the aftermath of breaches of trust and harmdoing has grown in importance within the past few years. In this paper, we present the results of a qualitative study that offers insight into a series of key issues related to offender efforts to repair interpersonal harm in the workplace: (1) What factors motivate offenders to make amends with those they have harmed? (2) In what ways do offenders attempt to make amends? (3) What outcomes emerge from attempts to make amends? Drawing from the findings, we build an inductive model intended to guide future business ethics and management inquiry and research in this area.     

A Meta-Analysis into Multiscreening and Advertising Effectiveness: Direct Effects,Moderators, and Underlying Mechanisms

Using another media screen while watching television has become a part of people’s daily routines. The topic of multiscreening has thus received increased attention from advertising scholars in recent years. To gain a better theoretical understanding of the circumstances under which multiscreening effects occur and to offer practical guidelines to advertisers, the current study synthesizes the results of past studies on multiscreening and advertising and examines the direct effects of multiscreening on both cognitive and affective advertising outcomes, the possible moderators of those effects, and the underlying mechanisms of multiscreening with regard to advertising outcomes. The results indicate a negative direct effect of multiscreening on cognitive outcomes. The effect is weakened, however, by factors related to research, advertising, and media. In addition, the results show no direct or total effect of multiscreening on affective advertising outcomes, but this again depends on various media-, advertising-, and research-related factors. Finally, the results show that attention, enjoyment, and resistance constitute the underlying mechanisms that explain the effect of multiscreening on memory and persuasion.     

Ethical Stances: the Perceptions of Accountancy and HR Specialists of Ethical Conundrums at Work

This paper explores how managers and professionals from two functional areas, finance and accountancy and human resource management, perceive, think about and act upon ethical conundrums at work. The study is based on 43 interviews in which respondents were asked to report on ethical issues and incidents they had experienced at work. A conceptual framework is presented which is used to analyse the critical incidents.     

Advertising and Knowledge Intermediaries: Managing the Ethical Challenges of Intangibles

In today's business environment, the knowledge-based society, globalisation, and information and communication technologies (ICT) have increased the role of "intangible" values of assets and resources for all industries. As a result there is an increased role for knowledge intermediaries; one of these, advertising, plays an important role in affecting consumer choice and knowledge. Ethical issues which arise for traditional purveyors of intangibility – cultural industries such as art, music, or film, spread to advertising. Building on our perspective of the measurement of intangibles we propose a new categorisation of types of goods or services, and a framework for identifying some future ethical challenges in today's global knowledge based society.     

The Influence of Perceived Importance of an Ethical Issue on Moral Judgment,Moral Obligation,and Moral Intent

The study extends and tests the issue contingent four-component model of ethical decision-making to include moral obligation. A web-based questionnaire was used to gauge the influence of perceived importance of an ethical issue on moral judgment and moral intent. Perceived importance of an ethical issue was found to be a predictor of moral judgment but not of moral intent as predicted. Moral obligation is suggested to be a process that occurs after a moral judgment is made and explained a significant portion of the variance in moral intent. Electronic supplementary material   The online version of this article (doi: ) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Russell Haines is an Assistant Professor of Information Technology at Old Dominion University. He received his B.S. and Master of Accountancy from Brigham Young University and his Ph.D. from The University of Houston. His research interests are in laboratory experiments, ethical decision- making, supply chain decision-making, and computer- mediated communication. Marc D. Street is an Assistant Professor of Management at Salisbury University in Salisbury, Maryland. He received his B.A. from the University of Maryland, College Park (1983); his MBA from the University of Baltimore (1993); and his Ph.D. from the Florida State University (1998). His primary research interests are in the areas of decision-making and business ethics. Dr. Street’s research has been published in journals such as Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Journal of Business Ethics, and the Journal of World Business, among others. Douglas Haines is Associate Professor of Marketing and Department Chair of the Department of Business in the College of Business and Economics at the University of Idaho. Before acquiring his Ph.D. at the University of Oregon, he worked for 15 years in various positions at the H.J. Heinz company including Vice President of the Weight Watchers Foods Division of Heinz USA. His research interests include decision making, particularly in the marketing channel context, inter firm relationships, and the development of the market for biodiesel and other alternative energy sources.     

The Impact of Ethical Ideologies,Moral Intensity,and Social Context on Sales-Based Ethical Reasoning

Previous research indicates that ethical ideologies, issue-contingencies, and social context can impact ethical reasoning in different business situations. However, the manner in which these constructs work together to shape different steps of the ethical decision-making process is not always clear. The purpose of this study was to address these issues by exploring the influence of idealism and relativism, perceived moral intensity in a decision-making situation, and social context on the recognition of an ethical issue and ethical intention. Utilizing a sales-based scenario and multiple ethics measures included on a self-report questionnaire, data were collected from a regional sample of business students, most of whom had modest work experience. The results indicated that perceived moral intensity was associated with increased ethical issue recognition and ethical intention. Idealism was also associated with increased ethical issue recognition, and relativism was associated with decreased ethical intention. Social consensus was positively related to ethical issue recognition and intention, while competitive context was inversely related to ethical intention. Finally, ethical issue recognition was associated with increased ethical intention. Idealism, moral intensity, social consensus, and work experience worked together as predictors of ethical issue recognition, whereas recognition of an ethical issue, relativism, moral intensity, social consensus, and competitive context worked together to predict ethical intention.     

A Typology of Moral Problems in Business: A Framework for Ethical Management

This paper develops a typology of moral problems in business. The cross-classification of two fundamental dimensions of ethical conduct: judgment and motivation, is employed to distinguish four types of moral problems: genuine dilemmas, compliance problems, moral laxity, and no-problem problems. Actual cases are brought to illustrate each type of problem, and corresponding coping strategies are presented. The paper highlights the need to design a dynamic strategy that will take into account the relationships among different types of ethical problems. In its capacities as both an analytical tool for identifying and clarifying an ethical problem and a strategic tool for handling it, the typology has direct implications for developing ethical awareness, assigning accountability, and unfolding typical rationalizations in business activity.Aviva Geva is senior lecturer in the Open University of Israel, with a Ph.D. in Business Administration from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The author of two text books and a monograph (in Hebrew) relating to business ethics and consumer behavior, she has also published a number of articles on issues of attitude change and moral decision making in business.     

Investigating Socialization,Work-Related Norms,and the Ethical Perceptions of Marketing Practitioners

This study examines the influence of socialization on work-related norms (WORKNORM). We tested the hypothesis that organizational (ORGSOC) and professional socialization (PROFSOC) are antecedent influences on WORKNORM, employing a sample of 339 marketing practitioners. The results of covariance structural analysis indicate that ORGSOC and PROFSOC and WORKNORM are discriminant constructs within the tested model. The study also reveals that the influence of ORGSOC on WORKNORM is stronger than the influence of PROFSOC on these same norms. Because this social learning occurs in work-related activities, in organizations, and in professional life, it is important that managers appreciate that these three separate domains influence decision making under ethical conditions. The limitations of the study and future research directions are discussed.     

Professional Values and Perceptions Underlying Ethical Judgments: A Survey of Marketing Professionals in Thailand

ABSTRACT

Theoretical and empirical works generally suggest that variations in ethical judgments exist between different cultures. This study analyzes the ethical decisions of Thai marketing professionals. In particular, it examines the relative influences of professional values and ethical perceptions on the ethical judgments of Thai marketers. The results based on a survey of members of the Thai Marketing Association indicate that there is a significant relationship between a Thai marketer's ethical perceptions and his/her ethical judgments. The results reveal a weak relationship between professional values and the ethical judgments of Thai marketers.     

Ethical Theory and Business Practices: The Case of Discourse Ethics

By focusing on the reasoned debate in the discourse-ethical approach to business ethics, this paper discusses the possibilities and limitations of moral reasoning as well as applied economic and business ethics. Business ethics, it is contended, can be looked at from the standpoint of two criteria: justification and application. These criteria are used to compare three approaches: the Integrative Business Ethics, developed by Swiss philosopher Peter Ulrich, the Cultural Business Ethics of the Nuremberg School in German business ethics, and the concept of “Good Conservation” by Frederick Bird. It is argued that discourse-ethical approaches can be called upon for justifying moral principles. Improving the chances of their application, however, necessitates a good understanding of lifeworlds and culturally developed institutional settings. Bearing this in mind, further research perspectives stressing a linkage between discourse-ethical and critical approaches in social sciences are suggested.Dr. Thomas Beschorner is head of the research group “Social Learning and Sustainability” at University of Oldenburg, Germany and currently Visiting-Professor at McGill University, Montreal, Canada