Public Relations Autonomy, Legal Dominance, and Strategic Orientation as Predictors of Crisis Communicative Strategies

This article investigates the factors affecting how public relations autonomy, legal dominance, and strategic orientation affect crisis communicative response in corporate contexts. Communication managers, crisis managers, public affairs managers, and/or public relations managers were solicited from Taiwan’s top 500 companies to participate in a survey. The results revealed that, in contrast to public relations autonomy being the strongest and sole predictor of concession strategy, legal dominance could predict defensive and diversionary responses in crisis events. The article concludes with a discussion of practical applications and theoretical implications.     

Using Social Identity Theory to Predict Managers’ Emphases on Ethical and Legal Values in Judging Business Issues

The need to fill three gaps in ethics research in a business context sparked the current study. First, the distinction between the concepts of “ethical” and “legal” needs to be incorporated into theory building and empiricism. Second, a unifying theory is needed that can explain the variables that influence managers to emphasize ethics and legality in their judgments. Third, empirical evidence is needed to confirm the predictive power of the unifying theory, the discernable influence of personal and organizational variables, and the importance of the issue to the managers in determining their emphasis on the ethical and legal values of their judgments. Focused on these needs, the current research combines social identity theory with empirical findings from business ethics research. This theory building initiative framed hypothesis-driven research to investigate the influences on managers’ emphasis on ethical and legal values in making business judgments. An empirical research study was conducted involving 252 practicing managers who judged 12 newsworthy business events. Data was collected on the managers’ individual factors, on the groups that influence their judgments, and on the importance that the managers place on ethics and legality in judging the 12 scenarios. The research findings contribute to theory development (1) By successfully utilizing a blended extension of social identity and issue-contingent theories to understand managers’ judgments, and (2) By providing evidence on the relationships between the perceived importance of an issue and the emphases managers place on ethical and legal values in their judgments. The analysis of the data was extended to provide insights on the needs of employers to tailor management training on legal and ethical decision-making. The participating managers were clustered according to their emphases on Ethical Importance and Legal Importance in judging business situations. Analysis of Variance was then combined with Scheffé Multiple Comparison Tests to assess whether the factors derived from a blended extension of social identity and issue-contingent theories were significantly different across the clusters. The product of this analysis is unique sets of attributes that describe each cluster of managers, and provide an empirical basis for determining training priorities. Finally, the carefully constructed and thoroughly tested 12 research scenarios that form the core of the survey instrument enable their redeployment in subsequent research and their use by practicing executives who wish to compare data provided by their managers to results from the study participants.     

The Effects of Environmental Factors on the Behavior of Chinese Managers in the Information Age in China

This paper examines the effects of environmental factors on the ethical behavior of managers using computers at work in Mainland China. In this study, environmental factors refer to senior management, peer groups, company policies, professional practices, and legal considerations. Ethical behaviors include attitudes to disclosure, protection of privacy, conflict of interest, personal conduct, social responsibility, and integrity. A questionnaire survey was used for data collection, and 125 mainland Chinese managers participated in the study. The results show that peer groups, professional practices, and legal considerations do influence the ethical behavior of mainland Chinese managers in the areas of social responsibility, integrity, and accountability. A discussion of the implications of the results is also provided in this paper.     

Shareholder protection, ownership concentration and FDI

Host country's weaker legal shareholder protection may make it costlier for parent shareholders to monitor the foreign subsidiary and hold managers accountable in case of misconduct. This prospect may motivate the managers to invest in such foreign environments. However, the agency costs associated with such investments can increase as well. The latter would tend to discourage such FDI. We test this ex ante uncertain relationship using a sample of publicly quoted UK parents that established new, majority owned joint venture subsidiaries in Continental Europe. We find that host country's weak legal shareholder protection discourages FDI. This negative relationship, however, is less important for firms with higher ownership concentration, implying that parent's ownership concentration may be a substitute for host country's weak legal shareholder protection.     

Marketing retirement—or staying on the job

Financial packages provide the most common incentive to meet the legal requirement that retirement be voluntary. However, managers have other tools to encourage retirement or encourage staying on the job—within legal constraints and consistent with current health insurance changes that may make pre-65 retirement more desirable. In using these tools, managers must consider demographic realities that offer a large cohort available to replace retirees. To assist managers, a qualitative study among human resource experts probed how companies decide between encouraging retirement and encouraging staying on the job and also how each is accomplished to maintain a workforce best matched to job requirements. Suggestions for marketing retirement include starting early to encourage saving so that employees can afford to retire and improving the retirement ‘product’ by flexible alternatives to full-time work, including self-employment. Suggestions for keeping employees on the job include tailoring schedules and rewards to the preferences and needs of individuals who might otherwise retire.     

Weathering the legal climate today and tomorrow

This brief article highlights and reviews some of the topics covered at a recent hospitality-law conference, including: top legal issues and their effect on the bottom line; the concurrent and conflicting interest of owners, developers, and managers; ownership of guests' information; communications; and the legal liability of personnel issues. As those topics suggest, relationships at all hospitality-management levels have become adversarial. Managers and companies that ignore the warning signs of legal exposure may bear the brunt of the next wave of litigation.     

Female Managers in Taiwan: Opportunities and Barriers in Changing Times

Women workers' chances of becoming managers, and their experiences once promoted to that level, are increasingly important in Taiwan, a region that is in the throes of socio- economic and legal change. While it is clear that there are proportionally more male than female managers in Taiwan, little systematic research has been undertaken to investigate the reasons for this under-representation of women. The authors' exploratory study suggests that the work–family conflict and Taiwanese cultural values contribute to the barriers female employees encounter in their climb up the organizational hierarchy and may lead to the depression of their career ambitions; however, a proportion of the female managers interviewed felt that their promotional opportunities and their experiences as managers had improved significantly in their generation. The authors make suggestions to guide future research on women managers in Taiwan.     

The ten commandments of legal risk management

Effective legal risk management is not a separate field of endeavor. Rather, it is inextricably linked with good management and with ethical management; managers who behave professionally and according to ethically defensible principles of action are quite unlikely to find themselves and their organizations stuck in a legal and/or ethical quagmire. Behavioral decision theory offers some explanations for why those managers who go astray do so, but explaining how basic human tendencies, uncorrected, may incline us to questionable decisions is not to justify such decisions. Managers who follow the guidelines set forth in this article may nonetheless find themselves or their companies under assault in the law courts or the court of public opinion, but should such an unlikely event occur, they will be far more likely to be able to successfully defend themselves.     

The Social Commitment of Brazilian Managers: The Concept,a Scale,and an Empirical Study of Corporate Social Responsibility

The purpose of this study is to analyze the attitudes of Brazilian managers toward Corporate Social Responsibility, defined as their willingness to simultaneously meet the economic, legal, and ethical commitments that bind business companies to society. A Managers' Social Commitment Index (SCI) is proposed and a new scale is presented and confirmed as a reliable research instrument in a field study involving 252 Brazilian business managers. Results revealed that managers prioritize economic commitment, even though as they get older and more experienced they tend to sacrifice this commitment to comply with the law. Women showed greater willingness to integrate ethical interests in management decision making, revealing a higher degree of social commitment.     

Ethical dilemmas of relationship building in china

We analyze and discuss some ethical dilemmas of doing business on the Chinese Mainland, referring to detailed accounts of the gift‐giving and contract‐getting experiences of two overseas Chinese managers in dealings with Mainland Chinese managers in the sporting and leisure industries. We compare these cases with accounts of transactions in worldwide ship repair, and with a newspaper report of a sport‐related case in Hong Kong. Using a version of Kohlberg's moral‐stages model, and identifying key differences between guanxi and rational‐legal ethics, we explain how guanxi can become entangled with corruption in China. We link our explanations to the absence of rational‐legal moral governance, and to the sociological phenomena of anomie and relative deprivation. We conclude with suggestions about the conduct of China business. ? 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

How Ethical Behavior of Firms is Influenced by the Legal and Political Environments: A Bayesian Causal Map Analysis Based on Stages of Development

Even though potential impacts of political and legal environments of business on ethical behavior of firms (EBOF) have been conceptually recognized, not much evidence (i.e., empirical work) has been produced to clarify their role. In this paper, using Bayesian causal maps (BCMs) methodology, relationships between legal and political environments of business and EBOF are investigated. The unique design of our study allows us to analyze these relationships based on the stages of development in 92 countries around the world. The EBOF models structured through BCMs are used to explain how EBOF in a given country group are shaped by how managers perceive political, legislative, and protective environments of business in these countries. The results suggest that irregular payments and bribes are the most influential factors affecting managers’ perceptions of business ethics in relatively more advanced economies, whereas intellectual property protection is the most influential factor affecting managers’ perceptions of business ethics in less-advanced economies. The results also suggest that regardless of where the business is conducted in the world, judicial independence is the driving force behind managers’ perceptions of business ethics. In addition, the results of this study provide further support for scholars who argue that business ethics is likely to vary among countries based on their socio-economic factors. In addition to its managerial implications, the study provides directions for policy makers to improve the ethical conduct of businesses in their respective countries.     

Legally astute managers as a source of value in organizations

The legal and compliance departments in organizations have more influence than ever before. Why then are companies so vulnerable to legal liability? The problem may not be with talented legal professionals, but with the lack of legal knowledge held by MBAs and other business school graduates that make day-to-day decisions in modern organizations. Firms can close this knowledge gap and minimize legal liability by training their managers in legal astuteness—the ability of a manager to address legal issues successfully—by instilling four essential traits: respecting the rule of law, recognizing legal issues, resolving problems proactively, and reporting complex legal issues to experts. Job candidates should also be screened for traits of legal astuteness. A legally astute candidate, especially a graduate of a business school that requires legal education for all its students, can be a cultural ambassador for legal astuteness and a valuable liaison between legal and compliance departments and the candidate’s functional area. A legally ignorant candidate will require significant training and a frank assessment of the legal risk they bring to the organization. Modern firms in today’s legal environment face two choices: hire a legally astute manager now or deal with a compliance headache later.     

Shareholder Primacy,Corporate Social Responsibility,and the Role of Business Schools

This paper examines the shareholder primacy norm (SPN) as a widely acknowledged impediment to corporate social responsibility and explores the role of business schools in promoting the SPN but also potentially as an avenue for change by addressing misconceptions about shareholder primacy and the purpose of business. We start by explaining the SPN and then review its status under US and UK laws and show that it is not a likely legal requirement, at least under the guise of shareholder value maximization. This is in contrast to the common assertion that managers are legally constrained from addressing CSR issues if doing so is inconsistent with the economic interests of shareholders. Nonetheless, while the SPN might be muted as a legal norm, we show that it is certainly evident as a social norm among managers and in business schools—reflective, in part, of the sole voting rights of shareholders on corporate boards and of the dominance of shareholder theory—and justifiably so in the view of many managers and business academics. We argue that this view is misguided, not least when associated with claims of a purported legally enforceable requirement to maximize shareholder value. We propose two ways by which the influence of the SPN among managers might be attenuated: extending fiduciary duties of executives to non-shareholder stakeholders and changes in business school teaching such that it covers a plurality of conceptions of the purpose of the corporation.     

控制权配置、制度环境与家族企业治理转型——基于国美电器“控制权之争”的案例研究

文章以国美电器"控制权之争"为背景,采用案例研究方法剖析了家族企业治理转型过程中因创业家族控制权让渡而引发的控制权私利及其诱发机理,并进一步构建模型揭示了投资者权益司法保护制度和经理人诚信与声誉机制两类制度因素对经理人控制权私利行动和创始家族控制权让渡决策的影响效应。研究表明,无论是权益司法保护,还是市场声誉机制都对经理人控制权私利行动产生显著约束,进而对创始家族控制权让渡和家族企业治理转型进程产生影响,即司法保护制度和经理人市场越发达,创始家族向职业经理人让渡的企业控制权越多,家族企业治理转型进程越顺利。     

Professional service quality A step beyond other services?

The management and measurement of professional service quality is particularly problematic. To enable managers of legal practices to improve service quality they must understand the service attributes their clients consider important. Drawing on a series of focus groups conducted in the UK, this study provides insights into the assessment of legal services by commercial and corporate clients. A review of literatures pertaining to the evaluation of professional service quality, the concepts of quality and value, and dimensions relating to outcome and process is presented. The results of a series of focus groups are considered in the context of continuing research.     

Achieving Ethics and Fairness in Hiring: Going Beyond the Law

Since the passage of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and more recent Federal legislation, managers, regulators, and attorneys have been busy in sorting out the legal meaning of fairness in employment. While ethical managers must follow the law in their hiring practices, they cannot be satisfied with legal compliance. In this article, we first briefly summarize what the law requires in terms of fair hiring practices. We subsequently rely on multiple perspectives to explore the ethical meaning of fairness in hiring. Ethical fairness underlies the law and regulations in this area, but goes beyond them as well. We conclude by demonstrating that ethical hiring practices enable managers to make better hiring decisions.G. Stoney Alder is Assistant Professor of Management in the College of Business at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado at Boulder. His research interests include organizational justice, electronic monitoring, and ethics. Dr. Alder’s work has appeared in a number of journals including Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Human Resource Management Review, Journal of Business Ethics, and the Journal of High Technology Management Research, among others.Joseph Gilbert is an Associate Professor of Management at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. He teaches in the areas of business strategy and business ethics. His research is primarily in the area of business ethics. Prior to receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California, he had extensive management experience in the financial services industry.     

Illegal but ethical: an inquiry into the roots of illegal corporate behaviour in Russia

This paper examines the perceptions of Russian executives toward the relationship between legal and ethical conduct. The focus is on questions of tax evasion attitudes and corporate illegal behavior. Forty Russian managers and entrepreneurs from a variety of organizations were interviewed. Their actions are aimed at gaining corporate income and profit from operations through hiding corporate activity from state and local authorities in a context where these authorities levy excessive taxes and other types of payment from businesses. Tax evasion methods are presented and analyzed along with other varieties of illegal corporate behavior. The research results show that executives believe business could not perform in a completely legal way under Russia's existing conditions. Illegal performance is thus viewed as legitimate and ethical.     

Determinants of Ethical Behavior: A Study of Autosalespeople

This study proposes a model that explains the ethical behavior of automobile salespeople in terms of their ethical perception, legal perception, method of compensation (commission-based or salary-based), age, and education. The model is estimated by using five scenarios that involve ethical issues commonly found in the automobile industry and responses from 184 automobile salespeople in a mid-Atlantic metropolitan area. The findings suggest that ethical perception is the most important determinant of ethical behavior. Also, method of compensation is a major determinant in four of five scenarios, and legal perception in two out of five scenarios. However, age and education are not significantly related to ethical behavior. A discussion of the results, limitations, and implications is presented for managers.     

Ethics and Law: Guiding the Invisible Hand to Correct Corporate Social Responsibility Externalities

Tokenistic short-term economic success is not good indicia of long-term success. Sustainable business success requires sustained existence in a corporation’s political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental contexts. Far beyond the traditional economic focus, consumers, governments and public interest groups alike increasingly expect the business sector to take on more social and environmental responsibilities. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is the model in which economic, social and environmental responsibilities are fulfilled simultaneously. However, there is insufficient empirical evidence that demonstrates genuine widespread adoption of CSR in practice, and its underlying reasons. Though research in CSR has been rapidly growing, its commercial reality and implications need to be further improved if it is to inspire corporations to voluntarily adopt CSR. In the literature, Carroll’s four-dimensional (economic, legal, ethical and discretionary) CSR framework offers a theoretical basis for developing an empirically based model to explain why and how profit-motivated managers take up CSR voluntarily. Our study has developed a structural equation model to identify the key factors and their interactions that influence economically motivated managers to take on voluntary CSR, and validate Carroll’s four-dimensional construct. The results support Carroll’s four-dimensional CSR framework, with the exception of the link pertaining to the relationship between economic and discretionary/voluntary responsibility. This characterises the economic reality that financial market-driven economic responsibility does not automatically translate into social responsibility. Nevertheless, the empirical results demonstrate that corporations can be led to engage in more voluntary CSR activities to achieve social good when appropriate legal and ethical controls are in place.     

Changing the Odds: A Study of Corporate Social Principles and Practices in Addressing Problem Gambling

This paper documents a quantitative study into socially responsible principles and practices adopted in registered clubs in New South Wales Australia to manage one of their social impacts – problem gambling. The survey utilised an adapted version of Aupperle's (1982) corporate social responsibility instrument to measure the priority given to economic, legal, ethical and discretionary principles in club machine gambling operations. The survey also assessed support for certain management practices in responsible gambling. The results indicate that the participating club managers prioritise economic, legal, ethical and discretionary principles respectively, and that these are statistically related to practices they have implemented and support in responsible gambling. The managers most favoured secondary harm minimisation practices, followed by reactive primary intervention. Less favoured were proactive primary intervention and discretionary practices. These principles and practices contrast markedly with those advocated by key stakeholder groups, as expressed in semi-structured interviews and submissions to the NSW Gaming Inquiry. Non-industry stakeholders favoured a more balanced set of principles and a more holistic set of management practices in responsible gambling. The results also provide validation of Aupperle's (1982) instrument when applied to corporate management of a single social impact and for Carroll's (1979, 1991) construct of corporate social responsibility.