Ethics Codes and Sales Professionals' Perceptions of Their Organizations' Ethical Values

Most large companies and many smaller ones have adopted ethics codes, but the evidence is mixed as to whether they have a positive impact on the behavior of employees. We suggest that one way that ethics codes could contribute to ethical behavior is by influencing the perceptions that employees have about the ethical values of organizations. We examine whether a group of sales professionals in organizations with ethics codes perceive that their organizational context is more supportive of ethical behavior than sales professionals in companies without codes. After accounting for the effect of several covariates, our results indicated that sales professionals employed in organizations with codes of ethics perceived their work environments to have more positive ethical values than did other sales professionals.     

Understanding professionals' reactions to strategic change: the role of threatened professional identities

This article develops and demonstrates the utility of a framework for understanding professionals' reactions to strategic change in professional service firms as an interplay between a strategic intent, its manifestation in organizational roles and practices and its fit with existing professional identities. The application of the framework with three case studies shows that strategic changes may threaten different aspects of professional identities (self-enhancement, self-continuity and self-distinctiveness) which in turn tends to lead to different kinds of resistance from the professionals (exit, voice for opposition or voice for renegotiation). The article also links these different reactions to the locus of identification of professionals, which may be either ‘local’ or ‘cosmopolitan’.     

Corporate Ethics: An Exploration of Contemporary Greece

This study aims to discover marketing professionals' perceptions on ethical problems and current level of ethics in Greece, as well as, on the policy instruments used by companies to help employees make decisions in a more ethical fashion, using a qualitative research design. Specifically, it reports the results of a series of in-depth interviews conducted with Greek marketing professional employed by multinationals in Greece. A number of topics examining ethical problems, ethical standards, corporate policy instruments and corporate cultureserved as a basis for discussion. While the occasionally contrasting opinions revealed in part the perplexity of marketing ethics, respondents also arrived at points of convergence. All recognized government as playing the most prominent role in issues of public concern, legislation and overall ethical standards. Moreover, all marketers identified multinational and other foreign firms as a positive influence to the level of ethics, due to the introduction of policy instruments and control mechanisms. Finally, they also accepted the need for better informed customers and a strong organizational culture. Several recommendations are offered for consideration by marketing professionals interested in promoting ethical business conduct.     

Ethical Cycles and Trends: Evidence and Implications

Recent high-profile corporate scandals are reminiscent of the corporate raider scandals of the 1980s, suggesting that ethical scandals may occur in waves. This article provides a framework for analysis of this question by suggesting that ethical attitudes may be cyclical about long-term secular trends. We provide some empirical evidence from previously published work for the existence of cycles as well as a potential mechanism for their propagation, namely widespread publicity about a particularly salient event, e.g., Enron. Further, we posit that long-run secular trends would be affected through more deliberate, cognitive means, e.g., instruction in business ethics. We also discuss an important research implication, namely that traditional cross-sectional “book-end” studies surveying ethical attitudes at two different points in time may be unable to disentangle short-run cyclical movements from long-term secular trends.      

Employment Opportunities for Consumer Affairs Professionals

This analysis of consumer affairs professionals in business and government describes what functions they perform, where they are employed, what education and experience is required and what their salaries are. Professional educators in the consumer field have generally ignored the career field of consumer affairs professional. Colleges and universities train consumer majors to be educators, researchers, or extension workers, but little attention is paid to the education of consumer affairs professionals for business and government. This article not only attempts to give educators in the consumer field a greater awareness of this relatively new career so that they can develop educational programs more intelligently but also attempts to make business and government more aware of what is being done in this area so they may be able to utilize the talents of consumer affairs professionals.     

The Role of Corporate Value Clusters in Ethics, Social Responsibility, and Performance: A Study of Financial Professionals and Implications for the Financial Meltdown

This article delves into a potential mindset that may be responsible for the recent financial meltdown. Research relating to this mindset from different perspectives is reviewed. The findings from this literature review are used to create a conceptual framework for the empirical, ethical, and corporate social responsibility study of financial professionals. Data were collected from a survey of the professional membership of a large national association of financial professionals. This article reports the results of the analysis of data relative to the relationships among the four constructs—financial professionals’ perceived organizational value clusters, ethics, corporate social responsibility, and corporate performance. The findings indicate that organizational core values significantly affect corporate ethics, social responsibility, and financial performance. We propose that organizations in the financial industry can move toward being more ethical and socially responsible by adopting organic core values (e.g., democratic, open, trusting, enterprising, creative, stimulating) and moving away from mechanistic values (e.g., structured, regulated, procedural, authoritarian, closed, callous). We also found the adaptation of organic core values does not require the organization to suffer a loss in financial performance.     

Ethics as a Dependent Variable in Individual and Organisational Decision Making

This paper draws upon a recently completed research study of the responses of accountants and HR professionals to actual issues at work that had posed them ethical qualms. The study sought to get beyond ethical reasoning about hypothetical scenarios and to address issues of actual behaviour, focusing upon the interviewees explanations of these behaviours. In general terms there was an observable difference between the attitudes and behaviours of accountants and HR professions, but not in the simple, stereotypical sense. The concerns expressed by the interviewees when calculating their chosen courses of action in a given situation, reflected grave concerns for their current and future employment prospects, if they were to raise their concerns, either within their employing organisation, or beyond. The problems of whistleblowers are well documented, but at a time when corporate governance issues occupy the attention of financial markets and corporate boards around the world, and national governments are introducing new laws to ostensibly provide enhanced protection for whistleblowers, the evidence of this study is that moral agency remains at best an aspiration, and at worst a chimera.     

Donate Money,but Whose? An Empirical Study of Ultimate Control Rights,Agency Problems,and Corporate Philanthropy in China

Using empirical evidence gathered from Chinese listed companies, this article explores the relationship between micro-governance mechanisms and corporate philanthropy from a corporate governance perspective. In China’s emerging market, ultimate controlling shareholders of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are reluctant to donate their assets or resources to charitable organizations; in private enterprises (PEs) marked by more deviation in voting and cash flow rights, such donations tend to be more likely. However, the ultimate controllers in PEs refuse to donate assets or resources they control or own, which implies that corporate philanthropy by PEs comes at the cost of others, through assets or resources owned by minority shareholders. Even after devastating natural disasters such as the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake, the controlling shareholders continue to express reluctance to donate any assets they control. Despite widespread evidence that corporate philanthropy boosts corporate growth and profitability, these ultimate controllers indicate no intention to donate their own money as a means to improve corporate performance.     

An Examination of Differences in Ethical Decision-Making Between Canadian Business Students and Accounting Professionals

This study investigates the differences in individuals' ethical decision making between Canadian university business students and accounting professionals. We examine the differences in three measures known to be important in the ethical decision-making process: ethical awareness, ethical orientation, and intention to perform questionable acts. We tested for differences in these three measures in eight different questionable actions among three groups: students starting business studies, those in their final year of university, and professional accountants.The measures of awareness capture the extent to which respondents felt that a particular action was unethical according to each of several ethical criteria. We found few differences between the two student groups on these measures, suggesting that their education had minimal effect on raising their awareness of the ethical issues in the vignettes. Indeed, overall, the graduating student's scores were marginally lower than those of the entry-level students. However, the professionals viewed some actions as significantly less ethical than did the graduating students.The measures of ethical orientation capture the weight respondents placed on each of the criteria above in their evaluation of the overall morality of an action. The differences between the three groups were generally small, and were a function of the vignette, consistent with Jones' (1991) model of issue-contingent ethical reasoning.The measures of intention capture the extent to which a respondent perceives that s/he would perform the action. There were significant differences between the groups in three of the eight vignettes, driven by a difference between the professionals and the other two student groups. The awareness measures were strong predictors of intention. We discuss the implications of these findings for professional training and future research.     

Ethics and the Board of Directors in Spain: The Olivencia Code of Good Governance

In an open, unregulated and globalised economy, it is logical that the problem of corporate government not only occupy the time of academics, but also preoccupy both companies and the public administration. Corporate governance varies depending on several factors, such as the culture of a particular country, the economic situation and the organisational structures. Thus, there is no single recipe which can be applied automatically and is universally valid in all contexts. However, it is possible to propose some general principles which have duly stood the test of experience and are recognised as providing valuable guidance for efficient corporate governance.The aim of this article is to present the Spanish "Olivencia Report", which is an attempt to draft an "ethical code" containing a number of practices and principles, which, if they were to be applied, could improve the governance of the larger Spanish companies listed on the Stock Market.The pages which follow narrate the story of the making of the report, and highlight those features which distinguish this report from other analogous reports published in other countries, and which inspired the Olivencia Report. These reports, which include the "Cadbury Report", the "Viénot Report" and the "Peters Report" among others will also be dealt with. Once the more outstanding aspects of the Spanish report have been highlighted, the article closes with a brief concluding section, which goes beyond the case in question and stresses the relationship between ethics, corporate governance and the mission of the enterprise. This focus is of some importance as the literature on corporate governance rarely brings the ethical problem to the fore.     

The Corporate Identity Metaphor: Perspectives,Problems And Prospects

The metaphor of corporate identity may enlighten our theoretical understanding of corporate behaviour and communication, or, conversely, may mystify and distort our view of these affairs. The authors review the various metaphorical uses of the term and observe that much previous theorising has been based on deductions metaphorically transferred from theorising about human identities, rather than being based on empirical observations. A number of explanations based on these deductions are criticised as theoretically naïve and empirically false. The article reviews these misconceptions and identifies the theoretically as well as empirically legitimate ways to conceptualise the corporate identity metaphor.     

Professional Service Quality

Abstract

Many of the services that are directed to business clients involve work by professionals who are employed by and/or own a supporting practice. To date, little attention has been directed to the possibility that the large variations in the size and nature of these firms may be reflected in the quality of services they produce. Further, no attempt has be made to delineate those quality factors that clients associate with the firm and those that are associated with the individual professional. This article reports the results of an empirical study designed to investigate the perceived relative influence of the individual, the practice, and several client variables as they affect the delivery of service quality.     

Public Relations Leadership in Corporate Social Responsibility

Many of the negative connotations of corporate social responsibility (CSR) are linked to its perceived role as a public relations exercise. Following on calls for more positive engagement by public relations professionals in organisational strategic planning and given the rapidly increasing interest in CSR as a business strategy, this article addresses the question of how the theory and practice of public relations can provide direction and support for CSR. To this end, this article explores leadership styles and motivations of a sample of corporate leaders from prominent Australian-based corporations in relation to their chosen CSR activities to examine the current position of, and potential for, professional communicators’ impact in shaping CSR-driven policies at a strategic level. We find that while public relations theory has evolved, many leaders still see public relations professionals only as a source of positive publicity. Our findings suggest that the model of distributive leadership has more relevance to an emerging idea of public relations involvement in CSR than more traditional understandings of leadership. We conclude that the public relations profession needs to develop a greater understanding of senior management approaches to the development and dissemination of CSR activities to support organisational leadership as it currently operates with respect to CSR.     

The Role of Professional Codes in Regarding Ethical Conduct

This paper investigates the regulation of ethical behavior of professionals. Ethical perceptions of South African professionals operating in the business community (specifically accountants, lawyers and engineers) concerning their need for and awareness of professional codes, and the frequency and acceptability of peer contravention of such codes were sought. The existence of conflict between corporate codes and professional codes was also investigated. Results, based on 217 replies, indicated that the professionals believe that codes are necessary and are relatively aware of the contents of such codes. Despite these ethical tendencies, respondents (particularly lawyers) believe that their peers contravene their professional codes relatively often. No significant differences in ethical tendencies between professionals consulting to and those working in business were found. Many respondents were regulated by more than one code of ethics, but few experienced conflict between such codes. In the events of conflict occurring professionals chose to adhere to their professional code above others.     

Reviewing the Business Case for Corporate Social Responsibility: New Evidence and Analysis

This study complements previous empirical research on the business case for corporate social responsibility (CSR) by employing hitherto unused data on corporate social performance (CSP) and proposing statistical analyses to account for bi-directional causality between social and financial performance. By allowing for differences in the importance of single components of CSP between industries, the data in this study overcome certain limitations of the databases used in earlier studies. The econometrics employed offer a rigorous way of addressing the problem of endogeneity due to simultaneous causality. Although the study’s results provide no evidence that there is a generic or universal business case for CSR, they indicate that there is a strong link between single stakeholder-related issues of CSR and financial performance. However, the analysis does not establish causality within these relationships.     

Beyond Business Ethics: An Agenda for the Trustworthy Teachers and Practitioners of Business

Societies need markets, so just as trustworthy professionals are needed in fields such as healthcare, law and education, modern societies need trustworthy market managers, including corporate officers and directors. But in its screening of candidates, U.S. corporate business has lagged behind fields such as medicine and law, which in the nineteenth century addressed their need for screening by upgrading professional education and establishing licensing of individual practitioners. Corporate business, by contrast, has been too tolerant of problematic executives, particularly executives of a type shown by recent research in psychology to exhibit a set of personality traits including below average concern about bad effects of their actions on other people. Over-representation of this problematic type has cost corporate business the trust and respect it could earn by resting fully on a time-honored alternative foundation already espoused by many trustworthy teachers and practitioners of business. Society needs these trustworthy people of business to work together to establish screening of candidates for high level corporate positions by upgrading MBA education and establishing licensing for these positions. For reasons again based on current findings in psychology, screening candidates for the MBA could be significantly strengthened by requiring historical studies, particularly history of the corporate legal structure in the U.S. and history of the MBA itself. Upgrading the MBA and establishing correlated licensing could open the way toward corrections in the legal form of the corporation to bring it into line with hospitals, law courts and universities as places where responsible professionals pursue their callings on behalf of society.     

Risking the Sustainability of the Public Health System: Ethical Conundrums and Ideologically Embedded Reform

The purpose of this paper is to examine the outcomes arising from ideologically driven health reforms, which confronted an enduring socialized model of public health care in New Zealand. The primary focus is on the narratives arising from the unprecedented strike action of junior doctors, symbolic of industrial unrest in the public health sector. Analysis revealed the way in which moral obligations ingrained in the professional identities of junior doctors can be both enacted and persistently challenged by ongoing and extensive ideologically embedded reform. A socialized public healthcare system privileges cooperation and relies on a public service ethos, espousing commitment and goodwill of health professionals. The inverse tenets of a pursuit of efficiency through New Public Management validate an ideology of market principles which legitimate competitive and self-interested behavior. The value-based disconnect that occurred not only affected the goodwill and trust of junior doctors, but also destabilized their commitment to their work in a way that threatened the ongoing sustainability of the public health service. This paper suggests four areas in which research might help solve the ethical conundrums currently undermining a public health service. The suggested direction moves the emphasis on systems and activities toward the cognitive and emotional needs of healthcare professionals.     

Corporate heritage identity management and the multi-modal implementation of a corporate heritage identity

This article advances the theoretical and instrumental understanding of corporate heritage identities. This exploratory, empirical study focuses on both the nature and the relevance of corporate heritage identity as employed by managers for corporate identity management purposes. The research is undertaken within Britain's oldest brewery – one of the oldest corporate entities in Great Britain with a provenance spanning many centuries – and utilizes a qualitative and theory building case study. The research reveals two classes of management responsibilities vis-à-vis corporate heritage identity management, namely corporate heritage management activities and corporate heritage implementation strategies, which follow a particular corporate heritage identity implementation pattern identified. A normative framework synthesizes and marshals the findings. The empirical study provides insight into corporate heritage identity management and is potentially useful to both scholars and practitioners. This study advances the nascent area of corporate heritage identity management by providing empirical and theoretical insight into the salience and strategic relevance of corporate heritage identity as a resource for corporate marketing. The article provides a normative framework of actionable categories of activities related to the management and implementation of substantive corporate heritage identity dimensions.     

Actuaries,Conflicts of Interest and Professional Independence: The Case of James Hardie Industries Limited

Drawing on calls by researchers to examine corporate scandals involving potential conflicts of interest or compromise to professional independence involving the actuarial profession, this article outlines one such case. The consulting actuaries – to a large Australian listed company, James Hardie Industries Limited – found themselves advising two parties in a corporate restructuring where the interests of each were sometimes competing and the interests of the public appeared to be ignored. The James Hardie case is instructive in a number of ways: first, it demonstrates the subtlety with which conflicts of interest or pressures on professional independence can arise; second, it demonstrates how important professional issues can be obfuscated by more obvious and pressing financial and strategic issues; and finally it demonstrates that adherence to professional codes of conduct and the ease with which professional ethics can be compromised when those codes are vague and transgressions are rarely actionable. The James Hardie case highlights structural issues in the employment of consulting actuaries which presents risks to the profession. It demonstrates that the combination of an aggressive corporate management with a strategic agenda reliant on consulting actuaries that have a vested interest in promoting and maintaining valuable relationships, both financially and professionally, results in ethical challenges.     

Decision making behavior in smaller entrepreneurial and larger professionally managed firms

The main findings in this study are that: • Entrepreneurs from smaller firms are less comprehensive in their decision behavior than professional managers from larger firms, with comprehensiveness defined as the degree to which an individual follows a formal rational decision process; • As decision comprehensiveness declines, so too does organizational performance, both among entrepreneurs and professional managers.The present study was based on the responses of 15 entrepreneurs from smaller firms averaging 25 employees and 13 CEOs and other top level corporate executives from larger, more professionally managed firms averaging 740 employees. The firms were randomly selected from a list of mid-Atlantic electronic manufacturing firms. Field interviews and questionnaires were employed, as well as a decision scenario involving a series of questions to which the entrepreneur or professional manager responded.After reviewing the literature on entrepreneurship, the researchers noted that most of it focused on developing profiles of entrepreneurs—for example, that they were high achievers, impatient and made decisions quickly. However, little—if any—research has focused on the behavior of entrepreneurs, particularly when compared to that of professional managers. Given this gap in the research, a field study was designed to compare the decision behavior of entrepreneurs and professional managers. It was expected that entrepreneurs would be less comprehensive than professional managers, but given previous research on comprehensiveness, it was difficult to predict the consequences of this less comprehensive model for performance.The researchers note in the discussion and conclusion that the results of the study have major implications for entrepreneurs and professional managers. Granted that decision comprehensiveness should be emphasized, they question the ability of entrepreneurs to change their decision behavior. It is argued that many of the drawbacks of comprehensiveness can be overcome by more sophisticated planning techniques and information processing systems. The paper concludes by stressing the need for research on techniques and ways to train entrepreneurs and managers to be more comprehensive.In summary, the present study has produced some important preliminary findings. It confirmed in larger scale studies, they could have major implications for the manner in which entrepreneurs and professional managers are trained and developed.