Accounting ethics and education: A response

In this article we review the principal directions that an American Accounting Association committee has taken in the past three years to encourage the teaching of ethics in accounting programs and/or courses in higher education. We also (1) briefly comment on the place of accounting ethics in both higher education and continuing professional education and (2) provide some brief final comments.Dr. Stephen E. Loeb is Professor and Chairman of Accounting and the Ernst & Young Alumni Professor of Auditing at the University of Maryland at College Park. Dr. Loeb is co-editor of theJournal of Accounting and Public Policy.Dr. Joanne Rockness is an Associate Professor of Accounting at North Carolina State University. She has been a member of the American Accounting Association's Professionalism and Ethics Seminar Committee since 1988. Dr. Rockness has published in the areas of ethics and social responsibility in journals such as Accounting Organizations and Society,Journal of Business, Finance and Accounting, andIssues in Accounting Education.The authors are respectively Chair (1991–92) and Chair (1990–91) of the American Accounting Association's Professionalism and Ethics Seminar Committee. The authors appreciate the comments of William W. May on portions of the paper. The opinions expressed in this paper represent those of the authors and not necessarily those of the American Accounting Association's Professionalism and Ethics Seminar Committee.     

Proposal for a model for the elaboration of ethical codes based on discourse ethics

This article presents a model for the procedure of elaboration of an effective ethical code. Taking as the starting point the concept of business ethics as critical hermeneutics, we describe a process which will lead to the creation of a document that is truly ethical and efficient. We believe the elaboration of an ethical code should follow a definite procedure, and that the process is as important as the result, but we also add that in order for the process to be a truly rational dialogue it is necessary to make efforts to ensure the participation of truly valid interlocutors who can represent their interests in conditions that are as close as possible to an ideal community of dialogue. Our model for the elaboration of an ethical code attempts to break with the conventional distinction between processes of elaboration and application in order to develop a truly integrative ethics, while also giving attention to the concrete conditions in which the ethical code is developed. In our view the contribution made by this model is the emphasis it places on the transformation of the will of the participants in the dialogue.     

Ethical theory in business ethics: A critical assessment

How is ethical theory used in contemporary teaching in business ethics? To answer this question, we undertook a survey of twenty-five of the leading business ethics texts. Our purpose was to examine the ways in which normative moral theory is introduced and applied to cases and issues. We focused especially on the authors' views of the conflicts and tensions posed by basic theoretical debates. How can these theories be made useful if fundamental tensions are acknowledged? Our analysis resulted in a typology, presented here, of the ways in which normative theory, and the difficulties within it, are handled in business ethics texts. We conclude that there is a serious lack of clarity about how to apply the theories to cases and a persistent unwillingness to grapple with tensions between theories of ethical reasoning. These deficiencies hamper teaching and ethical decision-making.     

A critique of Western philosophical ethics: Multidisciplinary alternatives for framing ethical dilemmas

American discourse in business ethics is steeped in the traditional ethical theories of Western philosophies, specifically the Greek classics, Kant, and the British Utilitarians. These theories may be largely uninterpretable or unacceptable to non-Western populations owing to different traditions, religious beliefs, or cultural histories. As economic boundaries collapse and markets become more global in scope, traditional Western ethical thought may lead to clashes among Western organizations and companies from differing cultural settings. Such clashes could lead to alienation of foreign customers, firms and governments and resultant competitive disadvantage, or to an abandonment of ethical considerations altogether in the struggle to compete internationally. This paper puts forward two general alternatives to Western ethical philosophies as useful frameworks for the analysis of international ethical dilemmas. The first alternative uses new organizational economics, while the second emphasizes role relationships and organizational citizenship.William B. Carlin passed away on Thursday, March 3, 1994 in Louisville, Colorado, after this article was accepted but prior to its publication. Bill was a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Colorado and a faculty member at the University of Denver at the time of his death. His friends, family, and colleagues will miss him very much.Kelly Strong is currently an assistant professor of management at Illinois State University. He has written in the areas of corporate social responsibility and ethical decision-making. He teaches strategic management at Illinois State University.     

Corporate ethical consulting: Developing management strategies for corporate ethics

The increase of scandals in the business sector is forcing many companies to examine their corporate ethical behavior with a view toward rebuilding their corporate value system. This article describes how value-system reconstruction must proceed in a company and demonstrates that corporate ethics can only become plausible if based on a corporate ethical ethos. It outlines a five-step development plan of management strategies toward rebuilding a company's value system on this corporate ethos through: corporate policy and strategy reformulation; corporate ethical code promulgation and value-statement formulation; management ethical training and corporate ethical education; and corporate ethical performance evaluation. The role of the corporate ethical consultant is also outlined to illustrate how corporate ethical consulting can provide the specialized services designed to insure an enduring management ethical upgrading and to improve a company's corporate ethical performance record. The discussion indicates how corporate ethical consulting promotes good business through its capacity to deliver industry credibility and company security. Richard Guerrette is a Research Fellow at Yale University Divinity School, where he is conducting a research study in organization management process and corporate ethics. He is also a Lecturer in sociology at the University of Connecticut at Hartford and is an author of two books on ecumenical ministry and social movement organization in the church. He has published extensively in theological journals and has recently contributed an article on Environmental Integrity and Corporate Responsibility for the Journal of Business Ethics 5 (1986). He is the Director of Equipax, an organization/management consulting service in Farmington, Connecticut.     

Exploring the contextual and individual factors on ethical decision making of salespeople

This paper studies how salespeople make ethical decisions. For this purpose a structural model has been developed which configures how the organization's environment, the organizations's climate, and personality traits affect ethical decision making. Internal communication and the choice of a control system especially affect ethical decision making. Internal communication also affects the attraction of salespeople with unethical personality traits (Machiavellism), while the control system affects the ethical climate. Ethical climate and salespeople's personality traits also affect the ethical decision making. In fact the study shows that ethical decision making can be influenced by management.Willem Verbeke is assistant professor in marketing, School of Economics, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. His research concentration is sales management.Cok Ouwerkerk is founder and director of the CSA, a consulting firm for statistical applications, in Mijnheerenland, The Netherlands. He has been involved in many research projects at different Dutch universities and firms.Ed Peelen is associate professor at the School of Economics, The University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. His research concentration is marketing management and logistics.     

The developmental self-valuing theory: A practical approach for business ethics

Ethics in business has been an increasingly controversial and important topic of discussion over the last decade. Debate continues about whether ethics should be a part of business, but also includes how business can implement ethical theory in day-to-day operations. Most discussions focus on either traditional moral philosophy, which offers little of practical value for the business community, or psychological theories of moral reasoning, which have been shown to be flawed and incomplete. The theory presented here is called the Developmental Self-Valuing Theory, and adapts the general psychological theory of Albert Bandura for ethics in business. In this theory, individuals first learn moral values from associations with others who are significant in their lives. Secondly, self-regulation is learned through a process of self-observation, self-judgment and self-reaction. Thirdly, the individual must believe that he can act ethically. Situational constraints and inducements, as well as positive and negative consequences for specific behaviors, will also affect the level of ethical performance. Each of these elements is examined and combined to achieve a practical method for increasing the level of ethics in corporate activity through selection, training and situational enhancement. Larry Jensen is Professor of Psychology at Brigham Young University. He has published in the areas of moral reasoning, education, and behavior. Steve Wygant is a doctoral candidate in the area of Social Psychology with primary interests in the philosophy of science and personality research.     

Embedded ethics: How complex systems and structures guide ethical outcomes

This article introduces a new concept, embedded ethics, to explain the subtle impact that complex systems and structures have on ethical outcomes. We define embedded ethics as the entrenched complex of networked structural indicators that subtly and silently direct actions in the form of normalized industrial, organizational, and/or functional-role behavior. We then describe two examples—one from the legal systems (corporate governance) and one from business (shareholder value)—to demonstrate the usefulness of this concept in helping to identify opportunities to improve unethical outcomes in systems in which actors otherwise are understood as just doing their job. The concept of embedded ethics is especially critical in our too-big-to-fail corporate environment and Post-Internet Age of technological innovation.     

Advertising Repetition: A Meta-Analysis on Effective Frequency in Advertising

This study uses meta-analytic techniques to examine the number of exposures that maximize consumer response to an ad. The results show that in an experimental setting maximum attitude is reached at approximately ten exposures, while recall increases linearly and does not level off before the eighth exposure. The findings are of interest for two opposing schools of thought in the advertising literature on effective frequency. They support the repetitionists’ beliefs over the minimalists’ beliefs on the number of ad exposures needed for maximum consumer response. The study further investigates whether the repetition effects depend on contingent factors. Low involvement and spaced exposures enhance repetition effects on attitude toward the brand. Embedded advertising and massed exposures enhance the repetition effects on recall. Repetition effects decay over time for both attitude toward the brand and recall. The study provides important implications for researchers by contributing to the discussion on effective frequency and providing support for the repetitionists’ view. This view has implications for practitioners who try to optimize advertising frequency.     

Consumer ethics: An investigation of the ethical beliefs of elderly consumers

Business and especially marketing ethics have come to the forefront in recent years. While consumers have been surveyed regarding their perceptions of ethical business and marketing practices, research has been minimal with regard to their perceptions of ethical consumer practices. In addition, few studies have examined the ethical beliefs of elderly consumers even though they are an important and rapidly growing segment. This research investigates the relationship between Machiavellianism, ethical ideology and ethical beliefs for elderly consumers. The results indicate that elderly consumers, while generally being more ethical than younger consumers, are diverse in their eithical beliefs. Dr Scott J. Vitell is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Mississippi. His publications have appeared in the Journal of Macromarketing, the Journal of Business Ethics, the Journal of The Academy of Marketing Science, Research in Marketing, various national and regional proceedings, and elsewhere. Dr James R. Lumpkin is the Gene Brauns Professor of Marketing at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. He has been published in such journals as the American Journal of Small Business, Journal of Retailing, Journal of Management, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Advertising, Journal of Advertising Research, The Gerontologist, Psychological Reports, Industrial Marketing Management, and Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science and other scholarly journals. Mohammed Y. A. Rawwas is a doctoral student of Marketing at the University of Mississippi. His publications have appeared in Medical Marketing and Media and national proceedings.     

Consumer ethics: An empirical investigation of the ethical beliefs of Austrian consumers

Business and Marketing ethics have come to the forefront in recent years. While consumers have been surveyed regarding their perceptions of ethical business and marketing practices, research has been minimal with regard to their ethical beliefs and ideologies. In addition, no study has examined the ethical beliefs of Austrian consumers even though Austria maintains a unique status of political neutrality, nonalignment, stability, economic prosperity and geographical proximity to the East- and West-European countries. This research investigates the relationship between Machiavellianism, ethical ideology and ethical beliefs of Austrian consumers. The results indicate that Austrian consumers are mostly situationists who, while rejecting moral rules, judge the ethics of a behavior by the consequences and outcomes of the situation. Mohammed Y.A. Rawwas is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Northern Iowa. His research has appeared in the Journal of Business Ethics, Marketing Educational Review, Advances in International Marketing, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Hospital Marketing, Health Marketing Quarterly, Medical Marketing and Media,among other journals and proceedings.     

Consumer ethics: moral ideologies and ethical beliefs of a micro-culture in the US

This study explores the ethical ideologies and ethical beliefs of African American consumers using the Forsyth ethical position questionnaire (EPQ) and the Muncy–Vitell consumer ethics questionnaire (MVQ). The two dimensions of the EPQ (i.e. idealism and relativism), and gender were the independent variables and the four dimensions of the MVQ (i.e. illegal, active, passive and no harm) were the dependent variables. A sample of 283 students from a historically black university was used to explore the relationship between the independent and dependent variables. Findings suggested that consumers who scored higher on the idealism scale and lower on the relativism scale were more likely to reject questionable activities. On average, females expressed more willingness to reject questionable activities than males.     

Rorty,Caputo and business ethics without metaphysics: ethical theories as normative narratives

Using the works of Richard Rorty and John Caputo, I want to suggest that we might be better off treating the traditional ethical theories of Kant, Mill, Aristotle and Hobbes as normative narratives rather than as justificatory schemes for moral decision making to be set up against one another. In a spirit akin to Husserl's ‘bracketing’ of metaphysics, when discussing ethical theories in business ethics, we can easily avoid metaphysics and use an approach that sees ethical theory as socially convincing normative narratives – narratives that unify us with others insofar as they describe our phenomenological experiences in a way with which many of us mutually resonate. I will do this by attempting to show how John Caputo's thinking in Against Ethics and Rorty's postmodern pragmatism might be appropriated to some extent by us in business ethics.     

Business ethics: A literature review with a focus on marketing ethics

In recent years, the business ethics literature has exploded in both volume and importance. Because of the sheer volume and diversity of this literature, a review article was deemed necessary to provide focus and clarity to the area. The present paper reviews the literature on business ethics with a special focus in marketing ethics. The literature is divided into normative and empirical sections, with more emphasis given to the latter. Even though the majority of the articles deal with the American reality, most of the knowledge gained is easily transferable to other nations. John Tsalikis is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Florida International University. His articles have appeared in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of International Consumer Marketing, and Psychology and Marketing. David J. Fritzsche is a Professor of Business Administration at the University of Portland. His articles have appeared in the Academy of Management Journal, Columbia Journal of World Business, Journal of Macromarketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Ethics: Guidelines for Managers, and Research in Corporate Social Performance and Policy.     

Consumer ethics: The possible effects of terrorism and civil unrest on the ethical values of consumers

Research investigating the consumer's ethical beliefs, ideologies and orientation has been limited. Additionally, despite the repeated call in the literature for cross cultural research, virtually no studies have examined the ethical beliefs and ideologies of consumers from cultures other than those in North America. This study partially fills this gap in the literature by investigating the ethical beliefs, preferred ethical ideology, and degree of Machiavellianism of consumers from Egypt and Lebanon. The results indicate that consumers in Lebanon, which has been torn by civil unrest and terrorism, tend to be more Machiavellian, less idealistic, and more relativistic than their Egyptian counterparts. Additionally, the Lebanese consumers tend to be more accepting of questionable consumer practices.Mohammed Y. A. Rawwas is Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Northern Iowa. His research has appeared in theJournal of Business Ethics, Journal of Hospital Marketing, Health Marketing Quarterly, Medical Marketing & Media, and national proceedings of the American Marketing Association.Scott J. Vitell is Associate Professor of Marketing and holder of the Michael S. Starnes Lecturship in Marketing and Business Ethics at the University of Mississippi. His work has previously appeared in theJournal of Macromarketing, theJournal of Business Ethics, Research in Marketing, theBusiness and Professional Ethics Journal and theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science as well as various other journals and proceedings.Jamal Al-Khatib is Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. His research has appeared in theJournal of Consumer Marketing, International Marketing Review andResearch in the International Business Disciplines as well as various national and regional proceedings.     

A question of ethics: Developing information system ethics

This study develops a pedagogy for the teaching of ethical principles in information systems (IS) classes, and reports on an empirical study that supports the efficacy of the approach. The proposed pedagogy involves having management information systems professors lead questioning and discussion on a list of ethical issues as part of their existing IS courses. The rationale for this pedagogy involves (1) the maturational aspects of ethics, and (2) the importance of repetition, challenge, and practice in developing a personal set of ethics. A study of IS ethics using a pre-post test design found that classes receiving such treatment significantly improved their performance on an IS ethics questionnaire. It appears to me that in Ethics, as in all other philosophical studies, the difficulties ... are mainly due to ... the attempt to answer questions, without first discovering precisely what question it is which you desire to answer. George Edward Moore, Principia Ethica [1903], preface. Eli Cohen is an associate professor of Management Information Systems at Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois. He received his Ph.D. from Indiana University and holds CDP, CCP, CSP and CDE certificates. He is also Midwest Editor for Government Technology Magazine.Larry Cornwell is professor of Business Management and Administration at Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois. He is the recipient of the 1988 Midwest Grain Teaching Award and has extensive consulting experience to industry. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri at Rolla. He has numerous publications in statistics, mathematical programming, computer science and information systems.     

Culture,Perceived Value,and Advertising Acceptance: A Cross-Cultural Study on Mobile Advertising

Abstract

Adverting standardization has been widely discussed since 1990s. Recently, this discussion has been extended to mobile advertising. When it comes to adopt a standardization or localization strategy, it is important that marketers understand how mobile advertising is perceived in different markets. This study examines the impacts of four perceived values of mobile advertising on young Australian and Chinese consumers’ acceptance of mobile advertising. The findings suggest that perceived functional value have the most positive effect on mobile advertising acceptance, followed by credibility and interactivity value. Further analyses reveal that culture moderates the relationships between perceived values and advertising acceptance.     

A critical evaluation of Etzioni's socioeconomic theory: Implications for the field of business ethics

Given the pervasive influence of neoclassical economic theory on the field of business, the opposition of the standard economists to the inclusion of moral factors in economic decisions provides an intellectual resistance to the ideas of many business ethicists. Etzioni (1988) offers a theoretical alternative to the neoclassical model, an alternative that includes a moral dimension. This article: (1) highlights the differences between Etzioni's proposed model and the neoclassical economic paradigm; (2) describes and critically evaluates Etzioni's proposed theory in view of his objective of synthesizing the neoclassical paradigm with a duty-based morality; and (3) discusses the implications of Etzioni's proposed paradigm for the field of business ethics.Diane Swanson is an Assistant Professor of finance and economics at Robert Morris College in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is also a doctoral student in Business Environment and Public Policy at the Katz Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh.     

Exploring origins of ethical company/brand perceptions — A consumer perspective of corporate ethics

This research provides a consumer perspective of corporate ethics. The study consists of twenty long interviews [McCracken, G., 1988. The long interview. Newbury Park, CA: Sage] with general consumers, and conceptualizes potential sources of consumer perceived ethicality (CPE) of a company/brand by investigating consumers' ethical perceptions of business behavior. The developed taxonomy delineates six domains and 36 sub-domains of CPE origin, relating to the impact corporate behavior has on: (1) consumers, (2) employees, (3) the environment, (4) the overseas community, (5) the local economy and community, and (6) the business community. Findings demonstrate disparities between the consumer and the business perspective and highlight the fact that sources of CPE prove considerably more diverse and complex than the literature suggests, therefore presenting a vital extension to existing research. By providing business managers with a comprehensive assembly of issues which may evoke un/ethical perceptions, the framework may serve as a code of business conduct to prevent, contain, or combat negative CPE.