Google in China: A Manager-Friendly Heuristic Model for Resolving Cross-Cultural Ethical Conflicts

Management practitioners and scholars have worked diligently to identify methods for ethical decision making in international contexts. Theoretical frameworks such as Integrative Social Contracts Theory (Donaldson and Dunfee, 1994, Academy of Management Review 19, 252–284) and more recently the Global Business Citizenship Approach [Wood et al., 2006, Global Business Citizenship: A Transformative Framework for Ethics and Sustainable Capitalism. (M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, NY)] have produced innovations in practice. Despite these advances, many managers have difficulty implementing these theoretical concepts in daily practice. Using the example of recent decisions by internet service providers Google, Yahoo, and MSN regarding censorship requirements in China, we offer six heuristic questions to help managers to resolve cross-cultural ethical conflicts in which the firm’s way of doing business differs from the practice in the host country. Recognizing that companies can take different approaches to law and ethics (Paine, 1994, Harvard Business Review 72(2), 107–117), our aim is to provide a management decision process to deal with demands or opportunities for engaging in questionable business practices in a host country.     

Ethical Decision Making: A Comparison of Computer- Supported and Face-to-face Group

This study compares computer-supported groups, i.e., groups using group support systems (GSS), and face-to-face groups using ethical decision-making tasks. A laboratory experiment was conducted using five-person groups of information systems professionals. Face-to-face (FTF) and GSS groups were compared in terms of their decision outcomes and group members' reactions. The results revealed that computer-supported and face-to-face groups showed no significant difference in terms of the decision outcomes of choice shift and decision polarity. However, FTF groups reached their decisions more quickly and they were more successful in attaining group consensus than GSS groups. Subjects evaluated face-to-face communication more favorably than GSS interaction on most post-group measures related to perceived group processes and satisfaction. Despite these outcomes, some possibilities for using GSS technology in an ethical decision making context are examined.     

Ethical reasoning and privileged information: Resolving moral conflict

Rule 301 in the Code of Professional Conduct — Confidential Client Information — has traditionally been strictly interpreted. In some instances this has placed CPAs in a situation where their own personal moral standards are in conflict with the Code of Professional Conduct. Moral reasoning is suggested as a means of resolving this conflict. The process of moral reasoning is illustrated by contrasting Act Utilitarianism with Rule Utilitarianism. The actual resolution of a moral conflict may result in a CPA violating the Code of Professional Conduct as it is presently being interpreted.     

The New Economy: Ethical Issues

The new economy is a technological revolution involving the information and communication technologies and which affects almost all aspects of the economy, business, and our personal lives. The problems it raises for businesses are not radically new, and even less so from an ethical viewpoint. However, they deserve particular attention, especially now, in the first years of the 21st century, when we are feeling the full impact of the changes brought about by this technological revolution. In this article, I will try to draw a "map" of the main, positive and negative ethical challenges raised by the new economy, concentrating on its three basic features: (1) a knowledge- and information-based technological change, (2) which is taking place in real time on a planetary scale (globalization), and (3) which entails a new, flexible, network-based business organization.     

Equivocal Reporting: Ethical Communication Issues

Communication is crucial to the fulfillment of organizational members' responsibilities. Bavelas et al. (1990) describe equivocation as nonstraightforward communication. It appears ambiguous, contradictory, obscure or even evasive. In their view, equivocation is a form of information control for the purpose of maintaining social relationships. It is avoidance; a response chosen when all other communication choices in the situation would lead to negative consequences. A critical role of accountants and other organizational members is the communication of results and activities to management. Professional standards require that accountants be objective and unbiased reporters. If results are clearly reported to management, then costs associated with failed projects have the potential of being contained or minimized. The ethical communication choice for a failed project is a clear and fair representation. However, organizational members may choose to equivocate in order to maintain social relationships in the organizational environment. The two experiments in this research study address the question: "If a negative project assessment exists, in fact, do subjects equivocate or send a clear message?" The two experiments analyzed factors in the message choices of approximately two hundred and eighty student subjects. The results indicate that subjects apply different standards in message choices pertaining to a social relationship versus an organizational setting. Equivocal message selection in a purely social context, a gift which the receiver thinks is awful, ranged from eighty-four percent to eighty-nine percent, while equivocal message selection for a failed business project ranged from forty-five to sixty-two percent. The incidence of false reporting for the failed business project was inconsequential and ranged from one percent to two percent. Experimental results are encouraging with respect to false reporting. However, the pervasive nature of equivocal reporting is disturbing. It appears that the curriculum and organizational training should consider being more attentive to the ethical dimensions of equivocation. Additionally, organizations, that have a culture, which enables or fosters equivocation, should assess the impact of this on their operating activities.     

Keeping Ethical Investment Ethical: Regulatory Issues for Investing for Sustainability

Regulation must target the financial sector, which often funds and profits from environmentally unsustainable development. In an era of global financial markets, the financial sector has a crucial impact on the state of the environment. The long-standing movement for ethically and socially responsible investment (SRI) has recently begun to advocate environmental standards for financiers. While this movement is gaining more adherents, it has increasingly justified responsible financing as a path to be prosperous, rather than virtuous. This trend partly owes to how financial institutions view their legal responsibilities. The business case motivations that now predominantly drive SRI are not sufficient to make the financial sector a means to sustainable development. Some modest legal reforms to improve the quality and extent of SRI have yet to make a tangible difference. A more ambitious strategy to promote SRI for environmental sustainability is possible, based on reforming the fiduciary duties of financial institutions. Such duties, tied to concrete performance standards, could make financiers invest in more ethically responsible ways. Other collateral reforms to financial markets, including improved corporate environmental reporting, are required to promote sustainability.     

FOCUS: Key Issues in Ethical Investment

Welcome precision is brought to the idea, history, types and motives of ethical investment in what will become an authoritative review of the subject. Marc Cooper is a postgraduate researcher at the European Business Management School, University of Wales, and Bodo Schlegelmilch, recently British Rail Professor of Marketing there, has recently been appointed Professor of Marketing at the American Graduate School of International Management (Thunderbird), Phoenix, Arizona.     

The Case for Ethical Non-compete Agreements: Executives Versus Sandwich-Makers

Journal of Business Ethics - Human capital, the knowledge, skills, and abilities of employees, can be a powerful driver of firm performance, yet the mobility of human capital raises questions over...     

Hot Versus Cool Behavioural Styles in Electronic Negotiations: The Impact of Communication Mode

In this paper, we study the effects of synchronous and asynchronous communication mode on electronic negotiations. By applying content analysis, we compare the negotiation processes of two e-negotiation simulations conducted in a synchronous and an asynchronous setting. Our results show significant differences in communication behaviour of subjects. Synchronous negotiation mode leads to less friendly, more affective, and more competitive negotiation behaviour. In the asynchronous communication mode, negotiators exchange more private and task-oriented information and are friendlier. These results suggest that negotiators in the asynchronous mode, who have more time to reflect, cool down and control emotions better while negotiators, who communicate synchronously engage more in emotional and competitive “hot” debates. In addition, negotiators in the asynchronous mode are more satisfied with the process and outcome of the negotiation. We conclude that de-individuation and escalating effects might be caused by communication mode rather than by the ability of the media to transmit social cues.     

Ethical Issues in Sales: Two Case Studies

Ethical issues in sales are an important and neglected topic in business ethics. Roughly 9% of the U.S. work force is involved in sales of one sort or another. But very little has been written about ethical issues in sales.     

FOCUS: Some Ethical Issues in British Insurance

Insurance is not well understood by most UK purchasers and many feel unease about it. Could this be partly due to the structure of the products on offer, and partly to the difficulties in obtaining good quality impartial advice? The author is Professor of Statistics, and a former Principal, at London Business School, Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College, London, and a past President of the Institute of Actuaries.     

Hollywood Ethics: Developing Ethical Issues ... HollywoodStyle

Hollywood has yet to produce a BusinessEthics epic. Between the special effects andcartoon characters, however, ethical issues dosurface, and, on occasion, Hollywood featuresintriguing and complex characters and plotsladen with moral freight. Some of these can beturned to student advantage, and this articlewill explore films that may become excellentteaching tools.     

A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Ethical Orientations and Willingness to Sacrifice Ethical Standards: China Versus Peru

Despite an increase in international business ethics research in recent years, the number of studies focused on Latin America and China has been deficient. As trade among Pacific Rim nations increases, an understanding of the ethical beliefs of the people in this region of the world will become increasingly important. In the current study 208 respondents from Peru and China are queried about their ethical ideologies, firm practices, and commitment to organizational performance. The empirical results reveal that Chinese workers are more relativistic and less idealistic than their Peruvian counterparts. One explanation for the disparity between these two groups is likely the variation in collectivism that can be traced to different levels of importance across ingroups and outgroups. In addition to a summary of the results, future research directions and managerial implications are discussed.     

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.     

Creative Accounting: Some Ethical Issues of Macro- and Micro-Manipulation

Preparers of financial statements are in a position to manipulate the view of economic reality presented in those statements to interested parties. This paper examines two principal categories of manipulative behaviour. The term macro-manipulation is used to describe the lobbying of regulators to persuade them to produce regulation that is more favourable to the interests of preparers. Micro-manipulation describes the management of accounting figures to produce a biased view at the entity level. Both categories of manipulation can be viewed as attempts at creativity by financial statement preparers. The paper analyses two cases of manipulation. First, it describes a recent case of significant and successful lobbying against the accounting regulator in the USA. The second case examines some recent Spanish earnings manipulation to demonstrate the effects of biased reporting at the entity level. Both types of creativity are considered in an ethical context. The paper concludes that the manipulations described in it can be regarded as morally reprehensible. They are not fair to users, they involve an unjust exercise of power, and they tend to weaken the authority of accounting regulators.     

FOCUS: Women in Management: An Empirical Exploration of Ethical Issues

Dr Goffee reviews empirical evidence on the labour market position and work experience of women managers, assesses the kind of work situations which are likely to be perceived by women managers - and, in some cases, their partners and colleagues - as involving an "ethical" dimension, and suggests possible sources of differentiation in the experiences of European women managers which are worthy of further comparative research. The author is Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at London Business School.     

Weight Discrimination in the American Workplace: Ethical Issues and Analysis

Research providing consistent evidence of pervasive discrimination against overweight job applicants and employees in the American workplace raises important questions for organizational stakeholders. To what extent is the disparate treatment of job applicants or employees based on their weight ethically justified? Are there aspects of weight discrimination that make it more acceptable than discrimination based on other characteristics, such as race or gender? What operational steps can employers take to address concerns regarding the ethical treatment of overweight individuals in the workplace? This article investigates these and related questions. Its purpose is to provide information and analysis that will assist organizations in formulating ethical responses to a widespread phenomenon: weight discrimination in the workplace. Although its focus is the American workplace, the proposed employer ethical obligations and the practical guidance that is provided are viewed as generalizing across countries and cultures.     

The Employment At-Will Doctrine: Second Level Ethical Issues and Analysis

There is an ongoing debate over the ethical status of policies that give an employer the right to discharge an employee without a good reason or notice (i.e., employment at-will policies). This article moves beyond the question of whether the adoption of such a policy is unethical per se under all circumstances, focusing instead on the following question: Assuming that an at-will policy is not unethical per se in all circumstances, what are the ethical issues associated with an employer's implementation and maintenance of an employment at-will policy, and how can these issues be addressed? Three primary ethical concerns are identified and discussed, and specific propositions regarding employers' obligations are presented. The article concludes by offering practical guidance intended to assist at-will employers in meeting the identified ethical obligations.