Creed,cult, code and business ethics

What does religion contribute to business ethics? Related to the practical, religion applies theological concepts to business situations; namely, vocation, stewardship, human dignity, co-creation, co-conservation, sharing in God's power, servant leadership, encounter with the Incarnation, sacramental sign and justice (divine and human). These concepts suggest the threefold component of religion: doctrine (creed), worship (cult) and values governing behavior (code). A principle taken from religious practice illustrates its unique contribution to business ethics. The principle of proportionality (or double effect) exemplifies code in its balancing of good and evil outcomes. The more contemporary principle called the fundamental option identifies the role of vocation and calling in the notion of creed. The component cult might be reflected in the insistence on human dignity which is highlighted in papal social teaching.     

Strategic shifts that build executive leadership

Organizations are challenged to develop leaders who can think strategically about the business and solve systemic problems. How can mid-level leaders develop this capability? Herein, we describe five strategic shifts in perspective that are essential for mid-level managers in transitioning successfully to strategic leadership positions. All five shifts improve mid-level leaders’ ability to look beyond tactics to see wider opportunities and enable strategic impact. The shifts are iterative and build on each other. We offer a new model that guides managers in shaping strategic leaders using these five perspective shifts to impact the organization positively and substantially. Further, we provide specific techniques that mid-level managers can employ to shift their perspectives and build personal strategic capabilities. Finally, we share specific ‘Try It’ exercises that mid-level managers can engage in to learn about the preferred concepts.     

Business Leadership: Three Levels of Ethical Analysis

Research on the normative aspect of leadership is still a relatively new enterprise within the mainstream of leadership studies. In the past, most academic inquiry into leadership was grounded in a social scientific paradigm that largely ignored the ethical substance of leadership. However, perhaps because of a number of public and infamous cases of failure in business leadership, in recent years there has been renewed interest in the ethical side of leadership in business. This paper argues that ethical issues of leadership actually arise at number of different levels, and that it is important to distinguish between various diverse kinds of ethical issues that arise in the study of leadership. The three levels identified are the level of the individual morality of leaders, the level of the means of their leadership, and the level of the leadership mission itself. We argue that only by fully understanding all of the different levels of ethical analysis pertinent to business leadership, and the distinctive kind of issues that arise at each level, can we fully integrate normative studies of leadership into the field of leadership studies. As such, this paper offers a model that incorporates three different levels of ethical analysis that can be used to study normative issues in leadership studies. Such a model can be used to better understand and integrate ethical issues into research, teaching, and training in leadership.     

The Strategic Implications of EMU for European Banking

This paper reviews the broad impact of the European SMP (Single Market Programme) and approach of EMU (European Monetary Union) on European bank strategies.

Select but key aspects of the competitive strategies that banks might pursue in this ‘New Europe’ are then considered. Within this review; the key strategic question is explored whether banks necessarily have to be bigger in order to be more efficient and even ultimately to survive in a post-EMU world. It is argued thut efficiency considerations should dominnte over size per se. The strategic perspective that will be developed is to

view EMU as the next stage on from the present SMF! This perspective avoids the mistake of visuulising any kind of EMU as likely to precipitate dramatic ‘breaks’ in the present

strategic development of European banking. Since the SMP is well advanced, we already have some experience of the

strategic reactions of banks towards a single European banking market; this provides a useful indicator of at least some of the broader bank strategic reactions that might be expected to EMU.     

Strategic prescriptive theories in the business context of an emerging economy

Three strategic theoretical concepts – design, planning and positioning – are examined for their relevance to the business context of Ghana. For design, the Ghanaian culture on respect for elders and authority is argued to be partly responsible for the ‘accepting’ nature of subordinates. Formal planning by organisations is mostly found with large companies and multinationals due to the influence of parent organisations. Firms seek to position on service reliability, value for money, branding, social responsibility and others. The paper contributes to knowledge and practice in African business by developing propositions around which organisations can achieve competitive advantage in the Ghanaian business setting during the application of the strategic concepts discussed.     

The Role of Integrity as a Mediator in Strategic Leadership: A Recipe for Reputational Capital

In the context of a crisis of confidence in executive leadership in corporate America, this paper examines the role of integrity as a mediator within strategic leadership and its impact on credibility in reputational capital. A tension can occur within strategic leadership between the elements of strategic planning and leadership vision. This tension can destroy the credibility of reputational capital unless strategic leadership is managed effectively. Integrity can be used as the glue providing for credible leadership vision amid a strategic perspective oriented to competitive pressures, thereby enabling strategic leadership to contribute to a sustainable competitive advantage. A strategic leadership audit is presented as a tool by which strategic leadership and reputational capital can be managed.     

Supplier Selection Practices among Small Firms in the United States: Testing Three Models

One of the issues investigated in recent studies on small business enterprises involves the role of supply chain management. Supply chain management has become an important part of strategic planning in both large and small businesses in the 1990s as firms increasingly choose outsourcingas an externally-driven strategic growth path. This study examines the supplier selection practices among 78 small business executives in the midwest United States by testing three models: rational/normative, external control, and strategic choice. Although the results show support for all three models, the rational/normative model emerges as the most significant model for predicting the supplier selection practices of small firms.     

Entrepreneurial personalities in political leadership

Societies around the globe respond to the contemporary technological and economic change by defining entrepreneurship and innovation as core principles for future competitive advantage. Does this rise of the “entrepreneurial society” also imply that entrepreneurial personalities are becoming increasingly widespread and powerful in political leadership? Joseph A. Schumpeter already argued that highly influential entrepreneurs are unique and show a certain personality pattern that can be described as being not only high in creativity and change orientation but also high in competitiveness and rule-breaking. It is interesting to ask whether such Schumpeterian personalities indeed play an increasingly important role in political leadership, given that daily routines of policy leaders, at least at first glance, usually require rather non-entrepreneurial strategies such as careful, risk-averse diplomacy. To address this question, we first survey the existing literature on personality and political leadership. We further present a novel personality analysis of an influential business leader that recently made a transition to political leadership: Donald J. Trump, the incumbent US president. Employing a language-based, computerized method of analyzing Twitter statements, we compare his online personality to the online personality of other influential entrepreneurs and business managers, who do not engage in political leadership. The results indicate that Trump is indeed distinct in that he shows stronger features of a Schumpeterian personality. However, he is also comparatively high in Neuroticism. We discuss these findings focusing on the potential implications of a concentration of entrepreneurial mindsets in political leadership.     

Theological ethics and business ethics

Philosophers have constituted business ethics as a field by providing a systematic overview that interrelates its problems and concepts and that supplies the basis for building on attained results. Is there a properly theological task in business ethics? The religious/theological literature on business ethics falls into four classes: (1) the application of religious morality to business practices; (2) the use of encyclical teachings about capitalism; (3) the interpretation of business relations in agapa-istic terms; and (4) the critique of business from a liberation theological point of view. Theologians have not adequately addressed the questions of whether there are particular theological tasks in the field as they define it, and whether, if they define it, the theological definition is different from the philosophical.     

Recognition Based upon the Vitality Criterion: A Key to Sustainable Economic Success

Recognition is a basic precondition of participation. This article applies the dimension of recognition to business ethics. A case is made for normative stakeholder management as a voluntary commitment at the level of corporate leadership; this also meets management’s strategic demands. A vitality criterion is offered as a heuristic instrument, suggesting that any operation should be avoided which would violate the legitimate interests of stakeholders. For this reason, the recognition of mutually-conditioned stakeholder claims is understood as the central management idea.     

The Role of Religious and Nationalist Ethics in Strategic Leadership: The Case of J. N. Tata

This paper examines the role that religious ethics, complemented by a nationalist principle, can play in a sustained exercise of strategic leadership, hypothesizing a positive association with a societal reputation for credibility or integrity. The key to this relation is the constraining effect on strategic or financial pressures, even if there is coherence in the long-term. J. N. Tata, the founder of Tata Industries who lived in British India, was a Parsee priest and an advocate for Indian national self-reliance and ultimately independence. Even as Tata's two ethics dovetailed with his business interests in the long-term, they conflicted sufficiently with the business calculus of some of his immediate and intermediate strategic interests such that he could enjoy a sterling societal reputation in India, his credibility transcending that of a businessman.     

The Challenge of Leadership Accountability for Integrity Capacity as a Strategic Asset

The authors identify the challenge of holding contemporary business leaders accountable for enhancing the intangible strategic asset of integrity capacity in organizations. After defining integrity capacity and framing it as part of a strategic resource model of sustainable global competitive advantage, the stakeholder costs of integrity capacity neglect are delineated. To address this neglect issue, the authors focus on the cultivation of judgment integrity to handle behavioral, moral and hypothesized economic complexities as key dimensions of integrity capacity. Finally, the authors recommend two leadership practices to build competence in business leaders to enhance integrity capacity as an organizational strategic asset.     

Living in Agreement with a Contract: The Management of Moral and Viable Firm–Stakeholder Relationships

In a contractual firm–stakeholder relationship the participants are expected to act according to the agreement and for mutual benefit. By acting against the agreement at the expense of the other participant, however, may result in higher individual profits within a short period of time. Building on the unlocked iterated prisoner’s dilemma (PD) setting, Scanlon’s [Scanlon, T.␣M.: 1998, What We Owe to Each Other (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass)] version of contractualism, and the social dilemma literature, this article considers what types of behaviors should be followed by both parties in an established firm–stakeholder relationship in order to reach an outcome that is defensible both in terms of morality and viability. It is argued that a normative foundation, which advises firms and stakeholders to ground their behavior on principles that could not reasonably be rejected by others, forms a basis for moral and viable behavior that can be expressed in the form of a strategic rule that excludes defection and utilizes the option to exit in response to the other participant’s defection. Then, a set of testable propositions is developed that describe how a firm and its stakeholders can further promote moral and viable relationships.Kalle Pajunen received his Ph.D. in strategic management. His current research interests include research methodologies, turnaround processes, stakeholder theory, strategic leadership, and business ethics. His recent articles appear (or are forthcoming) for instance in Advances in Strategic Management, Human Relations, Journal of Management Studies, and Leadership.     

The Impact of Ethical Leadership, the Internal Audit Function, and Moral Intensity on a Financial Reporting Decision

Two elements of corporate governance??the strength of ethical executive leadership and the internal audit function (IAF hereafter)??provide guidance to accounting managers making decisions involving uncertainty. We examine the joint effect of these two factors, manipulated at two levels (strong, weak), in an experiment in which accounting professionals decide whether to book a questionable journal entry (i.e., a journal entry for which a reasonable business case can be made but there is no supporting documentation). We find that ethical leadership and the IAF interact to determine the likelihood that accountants book the entry. Specifically, accountants are less likely to book a questionable journal entry when there is a weak ethical leader and a strong IAF compared to all other conditions. In addition, we find that accountants question the appropriateness and ethicalness of the request to book an undocumented journal entry more in the weak ethical leader and strong IAF condition than in the other conditions. These results suggest that the IAF has a different impact on financial reporting decisions depending on the ethicalness of executive leadership and that a strong IAF may cause accountants to question the appropriateness and ethicalness of an undocumented journal entry when combined with weak ethical leadership. We also find that the interactive effect of ethical leadership and the IAF on an accountant??s decision is fully mediated by his/her perception of the moral intensity of the issue. Thus, accountants, who perceive greater moral intensity associated with booking the entry, are less willing to do so.     

企业轻资产商业模式的内涵、动因及运营中的战略能力

轻资产商业模式是企业在特殊竞争情景中个性化发展的产物,是以最低的投入实现价值最大化的新战略思维,其以小博大的收益、避"重"就"轻"的运营成为商业模式和战略管理领域的典范,但该模式的成功运营需要独特的内部能力支持。本文将相关理论和源于商业活动的实践相结合,分析了轻资产商业模式的内涵、动因及其内在规律性,探讨了支撑该模式成功运营并决定轻资产企业效率差异、收益差异的5种战略能力,即价值创新能力、资源整合能力、跨组织管理能力、动态能力、学习能力。     

基于战略协同的子公司战略研究方法

处于子公司地位的企业如何制定战略是战略研究中经常遇到的问题。结合一个集团公司内部子公司战略制定的实例,提出了一套基于母子公司战略协同的子公司战略制定的思路与方法,并给出了一种功能与业务组合的关系矩阵作为确定子公司业务组合的方法,把子公司的功能划分为两个方面。通过明确子公司应具备的功能,确定其相应的业务组合。     

Detecting Supply Chain Innovation Potential for Sustainable Development

In a world of limited resources, it could be argued that companies that aspire to be good corporate citizens need to focus on making best use of resources. User value and environmental harm are created in supply chains and it could therefore be argued that company business ethics should be extended from the company to the entire value chain from the first supplier to the last customer. Starting with a delineation of the linkages between business ethics, corporate sustainability, and the stakeholder concept, this article argues that supply chains generally have a great innovation potential for sustainable development. This potential could be highlighted with system thinking and the use of change management knowledge, promoting not only innovations within technology but also within organizational improvement. We propose process models and performance indicators as means of highlighting improvement potential and thus breaking down normative business ethics’ requirements to an opertionalizable corporate level: Good business ethics should focus on maximizing stakeholder value in relation to harm done. Our results indicate that focusing on supply chains reveals previously unknown innovation potential that seems to be related to limited system understanding. The assumption is that increased visibility of opportunities will act as a driver for change. Results also highlight the importance of focusing on sustainability effects of the core business and clearly relating value created to harm done.     

Through the looking glass: Strategic organizational practices in strategic management

The field of strategic management indicates that there is no ‘one best way’ to manage strategy over time, leaving researchers with a pluralistic research setting. The findings here suggest that strategic organizational practices, a construct from the international business literature, can provide insight into the strategy formation process. I argue that strategic organizational practices, which are actor‐centered and embedded with values and beliefs, reflect both the content and process of strategy, and the organizational environment itself, thereby providing a pluralistic context of theoretical study. Through the exploration of four practices implemented by a large Canadian‐based multinational enterprise, the paper encourages a more explicit integration of strategic organizational practices, as a unit of analysis, into the field of strategic management. Copyright © 2017 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Integrating Ethics and Strategy: A Pragmatic Approach

An organizing framework is set out for the diverse literature on business ethics in relation to strategic management. It consists of sets of bi-polar components, spanning themes and topical themes, with a derived typology of contributions. Then, in the spirit of classical pragmatism, the organizing framework is re-cast as an integrative conceptual model of the strategy–ethics relationship. The approach recognizes that both pragmatism and dialectics can underpin progress towards integration, encompassing both normative and empirical aspects.     

The Freedom–Responsibility Nexus in Management Philosophy and Business Ethics

This article pursues the question whether and inasmuch theories of corporate responsibility are dependent on conceptions of managerial freedom. I argue that neglect of the idea of freedom in economic theory has led to an inadequate conceptualization of the ethical responsibilities of corporations within management theory. In a critical review of the history of economic ideas, I investigate why and how the idea of freedom was gradually removed from the canon of economics. This reconstruction aims at a deconstruction of certain axioms of neoclassical economics that hamper contemporary efforts in integrating ethics firmly into management education. I intend to show by these deconstructive endeavors that a constructive use of the idea of responsible freedom could correct and complement the current quantitative focus in business theory through qualitative orientations. I argue that with the help of qualitative success criteria, the strategic integration of the tenets of both business ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility into business practice can be advanced by further research.