Entrepreneurship and Ethics: A Literature Review

During the past twenty years, there has been an explosion of new interest in entrepreneurs and their activities. Yet only recently has serious research attention been devoted to the ethical problems encountered by entrepreneurs and their organizations. Entrepreneurs face uniquely complex moral problems related to basic fairness, personnel and customer relationships, distribution dilemmas, and other challenges. This essay surveys contemporary research in entrepreneurial ethics, examines the kinds of ethical dilemmas entrepreneurs confront, identifies major research topics and methodological approaches, and discusses possible directions for future research.     

International Marketing Ethics: A Literature Review and Research Agenda

Globalization has changed the nature of business in the twenty-first century (Doh et al. in Bus Ethics Q 20(3):481–502, 2010). With the increased internationalization of multinational corporations, the need to address international marketing ethics arises (Carrigan et al. in Int Market Rev 22(5):481–493, 2005). Given the diversity of environments and cultures, ethical issues are numerous and complicated (Iyer in J Bus Ethics 31(1):3–24, 2001). The understanding of international marketing ethics is critical to academics as well as practitioners. This paper is a literature review (1960s through 2013) of the study of ethics in international marketing. In order to develop a comprehensive review of articles, we review topics such as ethical problems, moral philosophies, and culture and ethics. We also discuss the methodological procedures that are used in international marketing ethics. Researchers and practitioners alike can use this research on international marketing ethics to discuss the phenomena and subsequently lead to future work research.     

中国股市政策市研究述评

文章对政策市的有关研究进行了归纳和梳理,将主要的研究概括为股市政策与政策市,政策市产生原因,不同属性政策的定性分析,政策市运行机制,政策市影响减弱分析,政策市退出市场等方面,揭示出政策市的最大问题是股市政策的行政化,政策市退出股市必须以增强投资者选择权为基础,而这需要经历一个漫长的过程。     

The Role of Religiosity in Business and Consumer Ethics: A Review of the Literature

This study investigates antecedents of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in multinational corporations’ (MNCs’) subsidiaries. Using stakeholder theory and institutional theory that identify internal and external pressures for legitimacy in MNCs’ subsidiaries, we integrate international business and CSR literatures to create a model depicting CSR practices in MNCs’ subsidiaries. We propose that MNCs’ subsidiaries will be likely to adapt to local practices to legitimize themselves if they operate in host countries with different institutional environments and demanding stakeholders. We also predict that MNCs’ subsidiaries will be likely to adapt to local practices to avoid spillover effects if their parent companies suffer major legitimacy problems at home or abroad. However, we speculate that MNCs’ subsidiaries will be less likely to adapt to local practices if they are strongly annexed to their parent companies and the benefit to gain internal legitimacy outweighs external legitimacy. This article contributes to the discourse on CSR across borders by exploring the antecedents of CSR practices in MNCs’ subsidiaries at social and organizational levels, and integrating institutional and stakeholder views. We provide a number of propositions for future studies and explore implications for practitioners.     

Redefining the Scholarship of Business Ethics: An Editorial

Traditionally, the term "scholarship" has been narrowly defined as discovery-based research. Teaching in higher education, by contrast, is perceived as an intellectually inferior activity. However, the teaching-research divide is a crude distinction which fails to capture the richness of scholarly endeavour in all disciplines. Drawing on Boyer's four forms of scholarship, it is argued that academic work in business ethics needs to be reconceptualised in terms which honour and value all contributions. This special issue of the Journal of Business Ethics, arising from an international conference on the teaching of business ethics, is illustrative of the scholarship of discovery, integration, application and teaching.     

会计稳健性经济后果的文献综述

基于投、融资角度对国内外会计稳健性经济后果相关文献的研究可知,会计稳健性与融资成本负相关,为采用较低的融资成本,企业应选择更为谨慎、稳健的会计政策来提高融资效率;对于会计稳健性与投资效率的相关性,现有文献并未达成一致结论。学者们在探究会计稳健性对融资成本影响的过程中,更侧重研究其对债务成本的影响,而对与股权成本相关性的研究则较少;目前众多会计稳健性经济后果的研究并无统一结论,在今后应对其加大研究力度,这对上市公司提高会计信息质量具有良好的启示作用。     

投资者情绪对股票市场影响的文献综述

在投资者情绪的度量以及其对股票市场影响的研究中,我国学者与国外学者都是采用直接、间接和综合指标,但二者对情绪的代理变量不同。国外学者关于投资者情绪对股票市场影响的研究认为投资者情绪变动与股票品种、股票市场收益和波动性有显著的相关关系,同时还能预测未来的股票市场价格;我国学者认为投资者情绪能较好的预测股票市场回报率和收益率,并对当前的市场收益率、上市公司财务结果有显著影响。我国应结合本国实际,进一步加强相关研究,以期投资者可享受正确预测带来的收益。     

Global Brands: Taking Stock

Global brands have never quite delivered on their promise. This article focuses on why this may now be about to change. The author first addresses three basic issues: why global brands matter more now than in the past; what distinguishes them from national brands; and the main building blocks for a global brand. He then moves on to some of the key problems which face managers of international brands today: the new Euro-zone, instability in emerging markets, the problem of diversion, and management of global relationships with advertising agents and market researchers. He concludes with a discussion of the issues involved in deciding whether brands should be taken global.     

Insights Regarding the Applicability of the Defining Issues Test to Advance Ethics Research with Accounting Students: A Meta-analytic Review

Numerous researchers have investigated accounting students’ levels of moral reasoning, ethical choice and judgment employing the Defining Issues Test (DIT) and using its P score as an indicator of moral reasoning. Not surprisingly, a number of DIT studies report conflicting results. Moreover, despite widespread use of the DIT, there is concern that it may not adequately measure all facets of ethical judgment (cf. Bailey et al., Behav Res Account 22(2):1–26, 2010). Thus, we endeavor to provide insight not only into the contradictory results but also about the applicability of the DIT for studying accounting students. To do so, we collect published and unpublished DIT studies employing accounting students as subjects and use meta-analysis to aggregate findings across these studies to quantify their results, examining commonly employed variables. We show significant relationships between P scores and some variables (length of professional experience, choice of major, political ideology, gender, GPA and education level) but not others (age). Further, our findings demonstrate that the DIT provides added insights when exploring questions of ethical choice, and ethics instruction, particularly when the instruction is embedded in an accounting course. Finally, we find that the level of DIT P scores reported in the studies relates to whether the study was published. We discuss the implications of our findings for future research.     

Celebrity Endorsement: A Literature Review

Use of celebrities as part of marketing communications strategy is a fairly common practice for major firms in supporting corporate or brand imagery. Firms invest significant monies in juxtaposing brands and organisations with endorser qualities such as attractiveness, likeability, and trustworthiness. They trust that these qualities operate in a transferable way, and, will generate desirable campaign outcomes. But, at times, celebrity qualities may be inappropriate, irrelevant, and undesirable. Thus, a major question is: how can companies select and retain the 'right' celebrity among many competing alternatives, and, simultaneously manage this resource, while avoiding potential pitfalls? This paper seeks to explore variables, which may be considered in any celebrity selection process by drawing together strands from various literature.     

Mapping Ethics Education in Accounting Research: A Bibliometric Analysis

Journal of Business Ethics - The attention being paid to ethics education in accounting has been increasing, especially after the corporate accounting scandals at the turn of the century. This...     

环境税"双重红利"假说文献述评

环境税的思想源于外部性理论,其最初目的在于消除由于污染导致的负外部性,以提高资源配置的效率.为了矫正环境污染的负外部性,自20世纪60年代起,西方理论界对环境税进行了深入研究,西方各国也开始了一轮环境税改革运动.作为20世纪0ECD国家进行环境税改革的重要理论依据,"双重红利"假说的提出及其后继研究具有重要的理论和实践意义.但是,"双重红利"是否存在,理论界至今未有结论.本文将对已有的有关环境税改革与"双重红利"的研究进行梳理,就已有的研究成果进行一个综述总结,最后简要评价其对我国环境税改革的启示.     

Ethics in Personal Selling and Sales Management: A Review of the Literature Focusing on Empirical Findings and Conceptual Foundations

Research into the ethics of personal selling and sales management has continued to increase in volume and importance. Because there is now a diversity of opinions and findings in this literature, an assessment of the status of existing knowledge is needed to provide focus and clarity. There have been no comprehensive reviews of the studies of ethics and salespeople, sales managers or sales management, despite recent attention from researchers, practitioners and the general public. The purpose of this review is to comment upon the more significant research in the sales ethics field with the objective of providing insight into the extent and direction of this knowledge, to evaluate the basis upon which it is founded, and to suggest areas of exploration that may be useful for increasing our understanding of it.     

A Five-Year Review, Update, and Assessment of Ethics and Governance in Strategic Management Journal

Although business ethics has a long history as a core theme within the realm of strategic management it has not received considerable attention in top strategy journals until recently. In this paper, we assess the state of business ethics research published over a 5-year period (2006–2010) in Strategic Management Journal to ascertain whether there has been an increase in business ethics research published in the top strategy outlet. The results of our content analysis reveal that ethics research in SMJ is indeed on the rise yet this research stream is still underrepresented with only 5.8 % of all articles published over the five-year period having an ethics theme. Moreover, the link between Corporate Social Performance and Financial Performance was identified as the top theme during the review period.     

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