Religiosity,CSR Attitudes,and CSR Behavior: An Empirical Study of Executives’ Religiosity and CSR

In this paper, we examine the relationship between Christian religiosity, attitudes towards corporate social responsibility (CSR), and CSR behavior of executives. We distinguish four types of CSR attitudes and five types of CSR behavior. Based on empirical research conducted among 473 Dutch executives, we find that CSR attitudes mediate the influence of religiosity on CSR behavior. Intrinsic religiosity positively affects the ethical CSR attitude and negatively affects the financial CSR attitude, whereas extrinsic religiosity stimulates the philanthropic CSR attitude. Financial, ethical, and philanthropic CSR attitudes significantly affect some types of CSR behaviors. However, because religiosity has opposing effects on the three attitudes, the joint mediation effect of the three attitudes is negligible. Furthermore, we find a direct negative influence of intrinsic religiosity on diversity and a direct positive influence on charity.     

Business Dilemmas and Religious Belief: An Explorative Study among Dutch Executives

This paper explores the relationship between religious belief and the dilemmas Dutch executives confront in daily business practice. We find that the frequency with which dilemmas arise is directly related to various aspects of religious belief, such as the belief in a transcendental being and the intensity of religious practice. Despite this relationship, only 17% of the dilemmas examined involve a religious standard. Most dilemmas originate from a conflict between moral and practical standards. We also find that 79% of the identified dilemmas stem from a conflict between two or more internalized standards of the executive.Johan Graafland is a Professor of Economics, Business and Ethics at Tilburg University and Director of the Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility at the Department of Philosophy of Tilburg University. He has published articles in The Journal of Business Ethics, Business Ethics: A European Review, Philosophia Reformatica, Journal of Corporate Citizenship, Applied Economics, Economics Letters, Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Empirical Economics, Journal of Policy Modelling, Public Finances/Finances Publique, Economic Modeling, Journal of Public Economics and others. His current research interests are corporate social responsibility and philosophy of economics.Muel Kaptein is a Professor of Business Ethics and Integrity Management at the RSM Erasmus University, where he chairs the Department of Business-Society Management. Muel is also a Director at KPMG Integrity and Investigation Services. He has published articles in a number of journals, including The Journal of Business Ethics, Business & Society Review, Organization Studies, Academy of Management Review and European Management Journal. His most recent books are The Six Principles of Managing with Integrity (Spiro Press) and The Balanced Company (Oxford University Press). His research interests include the management of ethics, the measurement of ethics and the ethics of management. Muel is a Section Editor of the Journal of Business Ethics.Corrie Mazereeuw-van der Duijn Schouten is a senior researcher at the Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. She has several years of experience as business consultant in the field of organizational change and group processes within organizations. Her research interests include leadership, religion and corporate social responsibility. She is currently working on a PhD thesis on religion and leadership.     

The Ethics Report: a Means of Sharing Responsibility

"An ethics report is a snapshot of a process taking place at various levels within a company and between its stakeholders." Ethics reports can serve a number of purposes, and for large multinational companies they can provide an important tool for stakeholder management, as is illustrated in the case of Shell. Muel Kaptein and Johan Wempe both work for KPMG Ethics & Integrity Consulting and lecture in business ethics at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam. Both are involved in the verification of the Shell Report.     

Spiraling Down into Corruption: A Dynamic Analysis of the Social Identity Processes that Cause Corruption in Organizations to Grow

To date, theory and research on corruption in organizations have primarily focused on its static antecedents. This article focuses on the spread and growth of corruption in organizations. For this purpose, three downward organizational spirals are formulated: the spiral of divergent norms, the spiral of pressure, and the spiral of opportunity. Social Identity Theory is used to explain the mechanisms of each of these spirals. Our dynamic perspective contributes to a greater understanding of the development of corruption in organizations and opens up promising avenues for future research. Niki A. den Nieuwenboer is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Business & Society Management at RSM Erasmus University, The Netherlands. Her research interests include the growth and development of collective corruption in organizations. She holds a Master of Arts in Social Psychology from the University of Leiden, The Netherlands. Prior to starting her academic career, she worked as a consultant in business ethics and fraud prevention for KPMG Forensic in Brussels, Belgium. Muel Kaptein is Professor of Business Ethics and Integrity Management at the Department of Business & Society Management at RSM Erasmus University, The Netherlands. His research interests include the management of ethics, the measurement of ethics, and the ethics of management. His␣research has been published in the Academy of Management Review, Business & Society, Corporate Governance, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Organizational Behavior, and Organization Studies, among others. He is the author of the books Ethics Management (Springer, 1998), The Balanced Company (Oxford University Press, 2002), and The Six Principles of Managing with Integrity (Articulate Press, 2005). He is also director at KPMG Integrity, which he co-founded in the Netherlands in 1995.     

How Much You See Is How You Respond: The Curvilinear Relationship Between the Frequency of Observed Unethical Behavior and The Whistleblowing Intention

Journal of Business Ethics - This article uses a sample of 3076 employees working in the USA to examine the relationship between the frequency of unethical behavior that employees observe in their...     

When organizations are too good: Applying Aristotle's doctrine of the mean to the corporate ethical virtues model

Aristotle's doctrine of the mean states that a virtue is the mean state between two vices: a deficient and an excessive one. The Corporate Ethical Virtues (CEV) Model defines the mean and the corresponding deficient vice for each of its seven virtues. This paper defines for each of these virtues the corresponding excessive vice and explores why organizations characterized by these excessive vices increase the likelihood that their employees will behave unethically. The excessive vices are patronization, pompousness, lavishness, zealotry, overexposure, talkativeness, and oppressiveness.     

Team Ethical Cultures Within an Organization: A Differentiation Perspective on Their Existence and Relevance

Studies on the ethical culture of organizations have mainly focused on ethical culture at the organizational level. This study explores ethical culture at the team level because this can add a more detailed understanding of the ethics of an organization, which is necessary for more customized and effective management interventions. To find out whether various teams within an organization can have different ethical cultures, we employ the differentiation perspective and conduct a survey of 180 teams from one organization. The results show that there are significant differences between the ethical cultures of teams. These differences are relevant given the different relationships that were established between high and low clusters of team ethical culture and two outcome variables (i.e., the frequency of unethical behavior and employee responses to unethical behavior). The results also show that the dimensions of ethical cultures among teams have different patterns, which indicates the usefulness of using a multidimensional scale for capturing further differences among team ethical cultures.