Relationships Among Employee Perception of Their Manager’s Behavioral Integrity, Moral Distress, and Employee Attitudes and Well-Being

Hypothesized relationships among reports by employees of moral distress, their perceptions of their manager’s behavioral integrity (BI), and employee reports of job satisfaction, stress, job engagement, turnover likelihood, absenteeism, work-to-family conflict, health, and life satisfaction were tested using data from the 2008 National Study of the Changing Workforce (n = 2,679). BI was positively related to job satisfaction, job engagement, health, and life satisfaction and negatively to stress, turnover likelihood, and work-to-family conflict, while moral distress was inversely related to those outcomes. The magnitudes of relationships with job satisfaction, job engagement, and life satisfaction were greater with BI than with moral distress. Moral distress mediated the relationships between BI and the employee outcomes, supporting the view that employee’s perceptions of their manager’s BI might influence the employee’s behaviors as well as their attitudes.     

Transitional Ethics: Responsibilities of Supervisors for Supporting Employee Development

New employees face a variety of life and career transitions in early adulthood. This paper explores these transitions that shape personal and career identity. A supervisor can play a central role in facilitating employee development during these times but may be unwilling or ill-prepared to do so. At other times he/she may provide assistance that is unwanted and inappropriate to the employee's developmental needs. The paper develops a framework for examining the supervisor's ethical responsibility to facilitate employee development and provides guidelines for managing these transitions.     

A Study of the Relationship Between Personal Values and Moral Reasoning of Undergraduate Business Students

This study examines values and value types as well as scores in levels of moral reasoning for␣students enrolled in a business program. These two factors are measured using the Schwartz Personal Values␣Questionnaire and the Defining Issues Test 2. No statistically significant differences in levels of moral␣reasoning, rankings of values, and value types could be attributed to gender. However, eight significant correlations between value types and levels of moral reasoning provide evidence that a systematic relationship exists. The relationships are not only internally consistent but also consistent with the model of values based on motivational goals (Schwartz S. H. and K. Boenke: 2004, Journal of Research in Personality, 38 230–255). Dr. George Lan, (Ph.D. Management, Queen’s University, Canada) is an Associate Professor of Accounting and a member of the Certified General Accountants of Ontario. His research interest and publications are in the area of business ethics and governance, accounting education and earnings management. Dr. Maureen P. Gowing (Ph.D. Management, Queen’s University, Canada) is an Assistant Professor of Accounting. She is a co-author of both a financial and managerial accounting text and has published articles on ethics and cost control, efficacy of health systems management, and gender differences in oral communication. Dr. Sharon McMahon (Ed.D. Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan in Curriculum Development and Counseling is an Associate Professor, Faculty of Nursing. Research interests include health and wellness of children and families, health behavior outcomes, and learner’s satisfaction. Author and co-author of publications related to nonprofit governance she integrates her lived experience as a board member on several nonprofit boards and professional organizations. Dr. Fritz Rieger (Ph.D. in Management, McGill University, Canada) is an Associate Professor of Business Policy and Strategy. His research interests and publications are in the areas of ethics, organizational behavior, systems theory, modeling, culture, and immigrant entrepreneurship. Dr. Norman King (Ph.D. in Religious Studies, University of St. Michael’s College, Canada) is a Full Professor (retired) in the department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures. He has authored and co-authored many publications in contemporary spirituality and Western religious thought and remains an active board member of the Children’s Aid Society.     

Abusive Supervision,Psychological Distress,and Silence: The Effects of Gender Dissimilarity Between Supervisors and Subordinates

Previous research has shed light on the detrimental effects of abusive supervision. To extend this area of research, we draw upon conservation of resources theory to propose (a) a causal relationship between abusive supervision and psychological distress, (b) a mediating role of psychological distress on the relationship between abusive supervision and employee silence, and (c) a moderating effect of the supervisor–subordinate relational context (i.e., gender dissimilarity) on the mediating effect of abusive supervision on silence. Through an experimental study (Study 1), we found the causal path linking abusive supervision and psychological distress. Results of both the experimental study and a field study (Study 2) provided evidence that psychological distress mediated the relationship between abusive supervision and silence. Lastly, we found support that this mediation effect was contingent upon the relational context in Study 2 but not in Study 1. We discuss implications for theory and practice.     

Auxiliaries to Abusive Supervisors: The Spillover Effects of Peer Mistreatment on Employee Performance

Journal of Business Ethics - An accumulating amount of research has documented the harmful effects of abusive supervision on either its victims or third parties (peer abusive supervision). The...     

My Boss is Morally Disengaged: The Role of Ethical Leadership in Explaining the Interactive Effect of Supervisor and Employee Moral Disengagement on Employee Behaviors

The popular press is often fraught with high-profile illustrations of leader unethical conduct within corporations. Leader unethical conduct is undesirable for many reasons, but in terms of managing subordinates, it is particularly problematic because leaders directly influence the ethics of their followers. Yet, we know relatively little about why leaders fail to apply ethical leadership practices. We argue that some leaders cognitively remove the personal sanctions associated with misconduct, which provides them with the “freedom” to ignore ethical shortcomings. Drawing on moral disengagement theory (Bandura 1986, 1999), we examine the relationship between supervisor moral disengagement and employee perceptions of ethical leadership. We then examine the moderating role of employee moral disengagement, such that the negative relationship between supervisor moral disengagement and employee perceptions of ethical leadership is stronger when employee moral disengagement is low versus high. Finally, we examine ethical leadership as a conditional mediator (based on employee moral disengagement) that explains that relationship between supervisor moral disengagement and employee job performance and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Results from a multi-source field survey provide general support for our theoretical model.     

Moral Luck and Business Ethics

Moral luck – which seems to appear when circumstances beyond a person’s control influence our moral attributions of praise and blame – is troubling in that modern moral theory has supposed morality to be immune to luck. In business, moral luck commonly influences our moral judgments, many of which have economic consequences that cannot be reversed. The possibility that the chance intervention of luck could influence the way in which we assign moral accountability in business ethics is unsettling. This paper argues that if we cannot explain moral luck away, we should give consideration to moral risk in our moral judgments and the associated assignment of economic rewards regarding episodes in which moral luck plays a role.     

Business Education,Values and Beliefs

The study was concerned with values, value systems and the beliefs of business students from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds. The study of values and values education in western societies is clearly different from the approach to a study of Asian values advocated by Lee Kuan Yew. We talk about integrity, idealism, honesty, fairness, altuism, justice, equity, freedom, but can we expect overseas students from different cultural backgrounds to have the same understanding of these concepts as students who have been raised in western society?

     

Communicating Ethical Values: A Study of Employee Perceptions

Communicating ethical values is a serious issue for a number of organizations. While ethical codes are useful, they cannot exist alone. Organizations must make certain codes reflect the ideals of individuals in the organization and the ethical expectations must be clearly communicated. This study examined the sources (people) and channels (ways messages were received) that affected how employees learned about ethics. Results showed that training and orientation programs were affirmed as sources of learning along with teaching others. Codes and handbooks were also identified as ways employees learned about ethics in their organization. Ethical issues were discussed more frequently with fellow employees than with supervisors suggesting that managers could be more proactive about discussing ethics with employees.     

Correction to: Auxiliaries to Abusive Supervisors: The Spillover Effects of Peer Mistreatment on Employee Performance

Journal of Business Ethics - A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-021-04793-5     

论商业企业终端营销道德

加强商业企业终端营销道德建设,不仅有利于更好地调整企业与相关利益者的关系,增强企业的核心竞争力,促进企业的持续发展,而且能够从根本上确保消费者的利益不受侵害,从而促进经济的繁荣,社会的和谐进步。就终端中的定价和服务两个方面探讨了终端营销道德建设,提出了定价和服务道德水平及标准,并对商业企业终端营销道德建设提出了若干建议。     

Cultural Values and International Differences in Business Ethics

We analyze ethical policies of firms in industrialized countries and try to find out whether culture is a factor that plays a significant role in explaining country differences. We look into the firm’s human rights policy, its governance of bribery and corruption, and the comprehensiveness, implementation and communication of its codes of ethics. We use a dataset on ethical policies of almost 2,700 firms in 24 countries. We find that there are significant differences among ethical policies of firms headquartered in different countries. When we associate these ethical policies with Hofstede’s cultural indicators, we find that individualism and uncertainty avoidance are positively associated with a firm’s ethical policies, whereas masculinity and power distance are negatively related to these policies. Bert Scholtens received his Ph.D. at the Universtiy of Amsterdam. Since 1999 he has been working at the Department of Finance of the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. His research particularly looks into the interaction between financial institutions and corporate social responsibility. He has published in, among others, Ecological Economics, Journal of Banking and Finance, Finance Letters, Journal of Investing, Sustainable Development, and Journal of Business Ethics. Lammertjan Dam is a Ph.D. student at the Universtiy of Groningen. He expects to defend his thesis about the integration of corporate social responsibility in economic valuation in Summer 2007.     

Integrating Business and Ethical Values Through Practitioner Dialogue

In practice, the relationship between business and ethics is not well-settled. In the past, organisations have developed an interest in setting value charts but this has been approached from a purely managerial perspective following the momentum and interest aroused by research on organisational cultures. Although interest in managing organisational cultures has slowly died down, for both theoretical and practical reasons we argue that there are feasible ways to explore values as part of an organisational culture. Indeed it is our claim that it is feasible and productive to discuss values within organisations. However, rather than developing sophisticated theoretical frameworks, more efforts should be put into thinking about the conditions under which participants can enter into productive dialogue. It is our claim that if processes are carefully examined people within organisations can make better sense of their work and discover their own perspective to account for what they actually do and to project themselves into what they think they should be doing. Thus, values identified within the organisation can eventually reach a point where they become an expression of a shared commitment. The experience we describe aims to illustrate only one example of a concrete application of this approach.     

The Influence of Business Ethics Education on Moral Efficacy,Moral Meaningfulness,and Moral Courage: A Quasi-experimental Study

The research described here contributes to the extant empirical research on business ethics education by examining outcomes drawn from the literature on positive organizational scholarship (POS). The general research question explored is whether a course on ethical decision-making in business could positively influence students’ confidence in their abilities to handle ethical problems at work (i.e., moral efficacy), boost the relative importance of ethics in their work lives (i.e., moral meaningfulness), and encourage them to be more courageous in raising ethical problems at work even if it is unpopular (i.e., moral courage). Specifically, the study used a rigorous quasi-experimental pretest–posttest research design with a treatment (N = 30) and control group (N = 30) to investigate whether a graduate-level course in business ethics could influence students’ levels of moral efficacy, meaningfulness, and courage. Findings revealed that participants in the business ethics treatment course experienced significant positive increases in each of the three outcome variables as compared to the control group. The largest increase was in moral efficacy, followed by moral courage, and finally, moral meaningfulness. These findings are discussed in the context of the current research on business ethics education and POS. Implications for future research are discussed.     

Universal Moral Values for Corporate Codes of Ethics

How can one establish if a corporate code of ethics is ethical in terms of its content? One important first step might be the establishment of core universal moral values by which corporate codes of ethics can be ethically constructed and evaluated. Following a review of normative research on corporate codes of ethics, a set of universal moral values is generated by considering three sources: (1) corporate codes of ethics; (2) global codes of ethics; and (3) the business ethics literature. Based on the convergence of the three sources of standards, six universal moral values for corporate codes of ethics are proposed including: (1) trustworthiness; (2) respect; (3) responsibility; (4) fairness; (5) caring; and (6) citizenship. Relying on the proposed set of universal moral values, implications are discussed as to what the content of corporate codes of ethics should consist of. The paper concludes with its limitations.     

Technology and Business: Rethinking the Moral Dilemma

In a market economy, the corporation is the primary institution through which new technologies are introduced. And the corporation, being primarily interested in economic goals, may ask very limited questions about the safety and workability of a particular technology. This viewpoint causes problems which manifest themselves in many cases where the concerns of engineers and technicians in corporations about decisions relating to a particular technology clash with managers prone to overlooking these concerns in favor of organizational interests. The problem can be seen as a structural one that is inherent in the capitalistic system. It can also be seen as an organizational or policy problem that requires changes in the organization to give engineers more authority in decision-making or to facilitate whistle-blowing on the part of engineers or technicians. In this paper, we take the view that problems surrounding the misuse of technology lie in a lack of understanding of technology's inherently social and moral dimensions. Technology creates a moral situation, and this situation should provide the context for decision-making. Technology is also experimental, and everyone involved with introducing a particular technology needs to ask the question as to whether a real life experiment is warranted. Finally, technology demands a moral sensibility which recognizes that business interests and technological interests alike need to be understood in the network of concrete relational contexts in which they are embedded.     

Universal Values and Virtues in Management Versus Cross-Cultural Moral Relativism: An Educational Strategy to Clear the Ground for Business Ethics

Journal of Business Ethics - Despite the fact that business people and business students often cast doubt on the relevance of universal moral principles in business, the rejection of relativism is...     

构建现代商业道德体系的思考

市场经济的发展、工商企业的搞活、消费权益的维护等都客观要求构建现代商业道德体系。为此，本提出和阐明了其目标选择和内容框架，论述了其实施对策：一要抓好教育宣传，使商业道德内化为市场主体的自觉意识；二要建立商业信用制度；三要建立明晰、完善的产权制度；四要建立健全经济法治环境。     

A Change in Business Ethics: The Impact on Employer–Employee Relations

This research explores the historical perspective of business ethics from the viewpoint of the employer–employee relationship by outlining the impact of the changing social contract between employer and employee relations from the end of World War II to the current day; provides the basic definition of the key elements of the organizational social contract and outlines the social contract in employment relations. It also provides what the author believes to be the key drivers in employer–employee relations and the benefits to good employer–employee relations for each individual within the employment relationship. The results of this research indicate a significant shift in business ethics as it relates to the employers relationship to the employee within a work environment. It further shows the state of the employment relationship prior to World War II. Written contracts were unheard of, but rather, the employment agreement was steeped in a tradition that carried the promise sealed with nothing but a handshake. Now employees have little or no rights; and the ones they are given are provided not by the employer, but by government regulation and court precedent. Issues such as time off for illness, sexual harassment, and workers’ compensation are all handled through legal or regulatory means rather than ethical considerations. The research further shows that the distinct lack of leadership within organizations play a significant role in the disintegration of employer–employee relationships. Specifically, how the lack of leadership relates to the emotional intelligence of the leader. Areas such as empathy and social skills are under trained and under developed by organizations. This research shows that the employer who is willing to give employees what they want and need are far more likely to have success, but more importantly, the organizations will be doing the right thing.