Ethical Culture,Ethical Intent,and Organizational Citizenship Behavior: The Moderating and Mediating Role of Person–Organization Fit

A multidimensional measure of ethical culture (EC) was examined for its relationship to person–organization (P–O) fit, ethical intent and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), using a sample of 525 employees from the financial industry in Spain. As hypothesized, relative to studies using unidimensional assessments, our measure of EC was more strongly related to ethical intent and organizational citizenship. Also, significant differences were found in the degree to which each the EC dimensions related to both ethical intent and OCB. Finally, in a first for the literature, we demonstrated the important role of overall P–O fit in connection with EC, ethical intent, and organizational citizenship. Specifically, as hypothesized, P–O fit moderated positively the association between EC and ethical intent, but mediated the EC–OCB relationship.     

Canadian Promoters and American Markets: Regulating the Irregular, 1945–55

Canada has long depended heavily upon investment from the United States, particularly in the natural resource sector. Why, in the decade after World War II, did Canadian authorities permit the sale of large quantities of highly speculative mining and oil stocks south of the border in defiance of American law? Why run the risk of angering officials in the United States and perhaps endangering access to capital markets there? The financial community in Canada contended that the sale of speculative shares was essential to the country's speedy development, and provincial regulators claimed that they lacked the necessary powers to control promoters selling in the US. Negotiations between the two national governments to amend the Extradition Treaty so that the worst offenders could be hailed before American courts failed to provide a remedy to this situation, so that it continued to threaten the friendly relations between the two countries from time to time.     

Green Leather for Ethical Consumers in China and Korea: Facilitating Ethical Consumption with Value–Belief–Attitude Logic

Using an innovative fabrication technique, eco-friendly faux leather (EFFL) has been newly developed as a green leather alternative for the Chinese and Korean markets. Value–belief–attitude logic drawn from the heuristic-systemic model (Zuckmand and Chaiken in Psychol Mark 15(7):621–642, 1998) and value–belief–norm theory (Stern et al. in Environ Behav 27(6):723–743, 1995) is proposed to explicate the consumer acceptance attitudes toward the EFFL product. The findings from the multi-group structural equation modeling analysis of online data (n = 600) support the relevancy of VBA logic in which utilitarian and hedonic value motivate pro-environmental belief, and the EFFL product attributes significantly mediate belief and positive attitude toward the EFFL product. The discrepancies across two countries and two age cohorts are noteworthy when pro-environmental belief and product-related information lead to different consumer VBA processes in specific market segments. This study presents insights which provide novel opportunities for managerial implementations and theoretical advancements in eco-friendly related subjects and issues.     

When Ethics Matters – Interpreting the Ethical Discourse of Small Nature-Based Entrepreneurs

This article examines the unique ethical concerns faced by small nature-based entrepreneurs in their everyday business operations. By using qualitative, empirical data, six kinds of business situations were identified to bring about moral consideration for all the entrepreneurs in this study. The business situations identified were the selection of raw material suppliers, reconciling the quality of production and the lack of resources, the pricing process, the content of marketing information, the close relationships to employees and the collaboration with other entrepreneurs. The ethical argumentation used in these business situations was examined in relation to three ethical theories: utilitarian ethics, deontology and virtue-ethics. This article shows that typical for the decision-making of the small nature-based entrepreneurs in an ethical sense is the variety of ethical arguments used and the important role of customers and employees influencing the ethical views of the entrepreneurs.     

Learning Atmosphere and Ethical Behavior,Does It Make Sense?

In the wake of corporate ethical scandals that have harmed millions of employees and investors, there has been an increase in the number of works written in the last decade, which aim to answer one apparently simple question: what causes unethical behavior, and what can we do, if anything, to prevent similar transgressions in the future? The extensive research around this question is the best proof of its real complexity as the challenge of disentangling the background of ethical behavior has obvious academic and practical interest. This study aims to take a further step toward that goal. Much research has noted the impact of multiple aspects of organizational contexts on individuals’ ethical behavior. However, studies that analyze the impact of organizational learning capability (OLC) on employees’ ethical behavior are few and far between. This was the first aim of this study. The second centered on gaining a deeper understanding of the relationship between OLC and ethical behavior by analyzing the mediating role of employability and organizational commitment. We tested our hypotheses through a structural equation methodology applied to a sample of 641 workers from 166 Spanish consultancy firms and found a positive, direct relationship between OLC and employability, OLC and organizational commitment, employability and organizational commitment, and organizational commitment and ethical behavior.     

Organising Shopping Services: Trends in Canadian Retailing, 1972–87

This article argues that innovations in organisational form are the driving force behind changes in retailing. After describing the decline in the value added component of retail sales that has occurred in Canada since the early 1970s, it then argues that an analysis of this trend should situate retailing within the more encompassing framework of shopping and recognise the response of organisations to externalities arising in shopping activities. Organisational change economises on the costs of coordination by reassigning activities and changing the incentives that face interacting agents. The argument is illustrated with examples from shopping centres and franchising.     

What is Ethical Competence? The Role of Empathy,Personal Values,and the Five-Factor Model of Personality in Ethical Decision-Making

The objective of the present research was two-fold: (1) to provide a new definition of ethical competence, and (2) to clarify the influence of empathy, personal values, and the five-factor model of personality on ethical competence. The present research provides a comprehensive overview about recent approaches and empirically explores the interconnections of these constructs. 366 German undergraduate students were examined in a cross-sectional study that investigated the relationship of empathy, personal values, and the five-factor model of personality with moral judgment competence and counterproductive work behavior as indicators of moral judgment and behavior. We found self-transcendence values to be related to both, high levels of empathy and ethical competence, in contrast to self-enhancement values. Multiple mediation analysis revealed unique effects of empathy on ethical competence through values as mediators. Affective (but not cognitive) empathy transmitted its effect on ethical competence through benevolence, conformity, tradition, power, and hedonism. Most importantly, perspective taking lost its predictive power when investigated alongside affective empathy dimensions. These results converge to an important role of affective empathy, in particular empathic concern, with regard to personal values and ethical competence. Furthermore, the five-factor model of personality explained variance in measures of ethical competence. Our research suggests that organizational decision makers should consider the role of empathy, personal values, and the five-factor model in their human resource management in order to select employees with high ethical competence.     

Measuring Consumers’ Ethical Position in Austria,Britain, Brunei,Hong Kong,and USA

Previous studies have found Forsyth’s Ethical Position Questionnaire (EPQ) to vary between countries, but none has made a systematic evaluation of its psychometric properties across consumers from many countries. Using confirmatory factor analysis and multi-group LISREL analysis, this paper explores the factor structure of the EPQ and the measurement equivalence in five societies: Austria, Britain, Brunei, Hong Kong and USA. The results suggest that the modified scale, measuring idealism and relativism, was applicable in all five societies. Equivalence was found across Britain, Brunei and USA, but the original scale cannot be used validly.     

Ethical Attitudes of Accounting Practitioners: Are Rank and Ethical Attitudes Related?

We address a previous finding in the business ethics literature in which accounting professionals in higher rank levels, i.e., “manager” or “partner” of auditing firms, appear to have lower moral reasoning ability than their junior counterparts. Prior investigations have relied upon a similar methodology for estimating ethical beliefs, namely testing “moral reasoning ability” using either the Moral Judgment Interview or Defining Issues Test. In the present study, we use a multiple vignettes approach to test for the existence of the inverse rank-ethical beliefs effect. With only 2 of the 30 vignettes resulting in both managers and partners being more accepting of the ethically charged behaviors, the results presented here using this alternative methodology are generally not supportive of the inverse rank-ethical beliefs phenomenon. We also use a multivariate analysis in order to control for demographic characteristics. Our results suggest that the most robust predictor of ethical attitudes among accounting practitioners is age, not rank within a firm.     

Ethical Decision Making: Panama–United States Differences in Consumer and Marketing Contexts

ABSTRACT

Results show that significant differences, both statistical and practical, exist between Panamanians and U.S. nationals in how they intend to behave in various consumption-related and marketing-related ethical situations. As cross-national marketing increases, the need to understand marketing and consumer ethics across countries becomes more critical. Additionally, as Robertson, Brady, and Hoffman (2001) Robertson, C. J., Brady, M. K. and Hoffman, J. J. 2001. Moral and marketing differences between the United States and Ecuador. International Journal of Organization Theory and Behavior, 4(1–2): 75–98.  [Google Scholar] point out, there has been a genuine lack of emphasis in the marketing-related ethics literature in Latin America. This study partially addresses that need by examining and contrasting the intended behaviors in ethical situations of Panamanians and Americans as consumers and marketers. The study contributes to marketing ethics knowledge on several fronts: (i) increasing understanding of ethics of Panamanians in consumer and marketing contexts, (ii) adding to the extant cross-country literature in the area of ethical decision making by consumers, and (iii) incorporating effect sizes, which is very rarely reported, to complement the significance values. Results show that significant differences exist between Panamanians and U.S. nationals in how they intend to behave in various consumption-related and marketing-related ethical situations. Managerial implications are also discussed.     

Stakeholder Management Capability: A Discourse–Theoretical Approach

Since its inception, Stakeholder Management Capability (SMC) has constituted a powerful hermeneutic through which business organizations have understood and leveraged stakeholder relationships. On this model, achieving a high level of capability largely depends on managerial ability to effectively bargain with stakeholders and establish solidarity vis-à-vis the successful negotiation, implementation, and execution of "win–win" transactional exchanges. Against this account, it is rightly pointed out that a transactional explanation of stakeholder relationships, regarded by many as the bottom line for stakeholder management, fails to provide managerial direction regarding how to resolve a variety of normative stakeholder claims that resist commoditization. In response to this issue, this paper has two overlapping goals. It seeks to elaborate a discourse theoretical approach to the problem by first drawing out Jurgen Habermas’ theory of communicative action and delineating the various types of rational discourse. Second, the paper attempts to present concrete implications for SMC relative to reshaping the contours of rational, process, and transactional analysis in light of central discourse theoretical conclusions. Dr. Abe J. Zakhem works primarily in the areas of ethical theory and business ethics. He has worked in private industry as a senior management consultant and chief operating officer and is currently an assistant professor at Seton Hall University.     

Up to standard?: Market positioning and performance of Hong Kong films, 1975–1997

The trade-off between conformity and differentiation that market entrants face has recently been enriched by a new sociological insight: differentiation is rewarded only within the confines of taken-for-granted market categories. Entrepreneurs, however, routinely engage in combining existing market categories. The present paper attempts to reconcile these seemingly different views by focusing on the role of market uncertainty. In particular, we predict that the propensity of entrants to blend multiple categories increases with market uncertainty. Upon considering the endogenous influence of uncertainty on market positioning, the positive returns obtained by entrants from combining multiple categories become apparent. Because differentiation inspires the positioning of entrants in the face of market uncertainty, the frequent adoption of the same combination by competitors dampens the performance returns derived from it. Our hypotheses find support from the analysis of a large sample of Hong Kong films during 1975–1997.     

Harmony,Justice, Confusion,and Conflict in Family Firms: Implications for Ethical Climate and the “Fredo Effect”

In this study, we analyze the financial performance and the managerial abilities of religious mutual fund managers, implementing a comparative analysis with conventional mutual funds. We use a broad sample, free of survivorship bias, of religious equity mutual funds from the US market, for the period from January 1994 to September 2010. We build a matched-pair conventional sample in order to compare the results obtained for both kinds of mutual fund managers. We analyze stock-picking and market timing abilities, topics widely neglected for the specific case of religious mutual fund managers. We also study style timing abilities. As far as we are aware, this aspect has not been studied previously for religious mutual fund managers. Our results indicate that religious mutual fund managers underperform both the market and their conventional counterparts. This result is driven by negative stock-picking ability which could be generated by excluding “Sin” stocks from their portfolios. Moreover, they are not able to time the market or any of the following styles: size, book-to-market, and momentum.