The Association Between Ethical Conflict and Adverse Outcomes

In this study, we consider the association between ethical conflict and adverse outcomes, including employee stress, (lack of) organizational commitment, absenteeism, and turnover intention. Our findings show that ethical conflict is associated with adverse outcomes. Our results identify the importance of ethical conflict for organizations and the benefit for organizations to address and mitigate ethical conflict. In addition, our research contributes to the person–organization and turnover literature by extending the person-fit framework to the ethical domain and by suggesting that ethical conflict can be useful in predicting turnover. The findings of our study reinforce the need to minimize ethical conflict in the workplace due to the organizational costs associated with ethical conflict.     

Ethical Pressure, Organizational-Professional Conflict, and Related Work Outcomes among Management Accountants

This study examines the effects of ethical pressure on management accountants' perceptions of organizational-professional conflict, and related work outcomes. It was hypothesized that organizational pressure to engage in unethical behavior would increase perceived organizational-professional conflict, and that this perceived conflict would reduce organizational commitment and job satisfaction, and increase the likelihood of employee turnover. A survey was mailed to a random sample of Certified Management Accountants to assess perceptions of the relevant variables. The results of a structural equations model indicated that, as hypothesized, ethical pressure was associated with higher levels of perceived organizational-professional conflict. Also as hypothesized, higher levels of conflict were associated with lower levels of organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Finally, lower levels of commitment and satisfaction were associated with higher turnover intentions.     

Ethical Investment Processes and Outcomes

There is a growing body of literature on ethical or socially responsible investment across a range of disciplines. This paper highlights the key themes in the field and identifies some of the major theoretical and practical challenges facing both scholars and practitioners. One of these challenges is understanding better the complexity of the relationship between such investment practices and corporate behaviour. Noting that ethical investment is seldom characterised by agreement about what it actully constitutes, and that much of the extant research focuses on a narrow set of issues, the paper argues that there are benefits associated with examining ethical investment as a process.     

Ethical Culture and Employee Outcomes: The Mediating Role of Person-Organization Fit

We build on limited research concerning the mediation processes associated with the relationship between ethical culture and employee outcomes. A multidimensional measure of ethical culture was examined for its relationship to overall Person-Organization (P–O) fit and employee response, using a sample of 436 employees from social economy and commercial banks in Spain. In line with previous research involving unidimensional measures, ethical culture was found to relate positively to employee job satisfaction, affective commitment, and intention to stay. New to the literature, ethical culture was also found to be associated positively with employee willingness to recommend the organization to others. These effects were observed even when perceptions of P–O fit were controlled. Importantly, ethical culture was also positively related to overall P–O fit, which in turn, partially mediated the relationship between ethical culture and employee outcomes. Our findings add to studies that focus on the importance of the degree of ethical congruence between the individual employee and the organization. They suggest that ethical culture, with its expected impact on virtuousness and emotional well-being, will positively influence outcomes independently of the degree to which there is a match between employee and organizational values.     

The Relationship Between Ethical Ideology and Ethical Behavior Intentions: An Exploratory Look at Physicians' Responses to Managed Care Dilemmas

Within the past few years, managed care health insurance programs have become commonplace. With managed care programs, however, physicians are facing increasing ethical pressures. This paper examines the relationship between physicians' behavior intentions with respect to four managed care ethical scenarios and their responses to Forsyth's (1980) Ethics Position Questionnaire (EPQ). This is one of the first papers to compare this scale to behavioral intentions in the workplace. We provide a literature review of the ethical dilemmas that doctors face under a managed care system and conduct a national random sample of general practitioners and surgeons regarding the four managed care ethical dilemmas. The results show that the doctors surveyed are significantly more idealistic than relativistic. In relating the EPQ to the ethical scenarios, however, there was no support for the proposition that ethical ideology was related to the ethical behavioral intentions. This suggests more research is needed to establish the links between ethical positions, attitudes, and behavioral intentions. Finally, there were little differences in EPQ scores by practice or demographic variables, the only significant result being that general surgeons are significantly more idealistic than family practitioners.     

The Hypothesized Relationship Between Accountability and Ethical Behavior

Unethical behavior is important to study because it may have an adverse influence on organizational performance. This paper is an attempt to better understand why individuals behave as they do when faced with ethical dilemmas. We first explore the definition, theories and models of ethical behaviors and accountability. This discussion of societal ethics and accountability as forms of social control segues into a discussion of how accountability may influence ethical behaviors. Based on the business ethics and accountability literatures, we suggest a number of research questions and hypotheses that need to be tested, as well as an appropriate research strategy.     

How to Attain Desired Outcomes Through Channel Conflict Negotiation

Channel relationships are dynamic and complex. Though much of channel literature has dealt with power, dependency, and conflict resolution, relatively little research focuses on how channel members apply different modes of negotiation to resolve channel conflicts and, most important, how they finagle their ways through different stages of negotiation to obtain desirable outcomes. This article suggests that in deciding which strategy to adopt to effectively negotiate with others, channel members should take into account two vital outcomes during the negotiation process: substantive gain and relationship outcome. Integrating high versus low levels for each of these two types of outcomes, this study develops a framework for channel conflict negotiation in an international setting and recommends appropriate negotiation strategies for various scenarios and phases of negotiation.     

The Influence of Organizational Expectations on Ethical Decision Making Conflict

This study considers the ethical decision making of individual employees and the influence their perception of organizational expectations has on employee feelings about the decision making process. A self-administered questionnaire design was used for gathering data in this study, with a sample size of 245 full-time employees. The match between the ethical alternative chosen by the respondent and that alternative perceived to be encouraged by his/her organization was found to be significantly related to both feelings of discomfort and feelings of intrapersonal role conflict. Implications for these findings are discussed.     

The Current Link Between Management Behavior and Ethical Philosophy

The current linkages between ethical theory and management behavior are investigated. The vignettes used in this investigation represent ethical dilemmas in the areas of coercion and control, conflict of interest, physical environment, and personal integrity. Overall, even with heightened ethical awareness the link between ethical philosophy and management behavior remains similar to that of the early 1990s. Generally, practitioners still rely heavily on the utilitarian ethical philosophy when making business decisions. However, more managers are now likely to select ethically appropriate actions either because it is ethical to do so, or because the consequences or risk of not doing so are too great. This shift could positively impact the ethical climate of business decision-making.     

“按劳分配”与“按生产要素分配”的对立与统一

"按劳分配"与"按生产要素分配"是马克思政治经济学与新古典经济学的主要分歧之一。以往学者的研究,总是将"按劳分配"与"按生产要素分配"相对立,但通过对生产要素的来源和其再生产过程的分析可以看出:导致两者存在差异的原因并不在于"私人占有",而在于"由谁来占有"。"按劳分配"和"按生产要素分配"是可以实现相统一的。对于社会主义国家,只要坚持自然资源的国有化,任何私人使用都必须有偿取得,且出让自然资源所获得的利益归全民所有,则除劳动力以外的其他生产要素参与分配是间接形式的"按劳分配"。在此条件下,"按生产要素分配"和"按劳分配"的结果是完全一致的,而不应当将两者相对立。     

The Role of Emotions in Envisioning Outcomes in Conflict Analysis

A conceptual framework is proposed that accounts for the role of emotions in shaping conflict behavior. The isomorphism between the characteristics that define and drive conflict and those that engender emotions makes it feasible to reconcile emotions with current conflict analysis techniques. Building on Damasio's somatic markers hypothesis, the concept of possibility facilitates modeling the effects of emotion on the scenarios apprehended by the decision makers. Attention is focused on two subsets of the conventional set of feasible states, the hiddenstates that are invisible because of existing emotions (usually negative), and the possiblestates that are invisible because of missing emotions (usually positive). These new concepts can be incorporated within the Graph Model for Conflict Resolution. A model of the confrontation between the United States and North Korea over nuclear weapons demonstrates that the new concepts can simplify analysis and make new predictions that are consistent with the actual unfolding of events. Our main goals are to draw attention to the centrality of emotion in conflict and to the need for research on the incorporation of emotions into conflict analysis and resolution methods.     

Ethical Outcomes and Business Ethics: Toward Improving Business Ethics Education

Unethical conduct has reached crisis proportions in business (Walker et al., Wall Str J East Edn, 258(37):A1–A10, 2011) and on today’s college campuses (Burke et al., CPA J, 77(5):58–65, 2007). Despite the evidence that suggests that more than half of business students admit to dishonest practices (McCabe et al. 2006), only about 5 % of business school deans surveyed believe that dishonesty is a problem at their schools (Brown et al., Coll Stud J A, 44(2):299–308, 2010). In addition, the AACSB which establishes standards for accredited business schools has resisted the urging of deans and business experts to require business schools to teach an ethics class, and fewer than one-third of businesses schools now teach a business ethics course at the graduate or undergraduate levels (Swanson and Fisher, Advancing Business Ethics Education, 2008). In this paper we briefly introduce the status of business ethics education and report the results of a survey of business students, deans of the top business schools, and business ethics subject matter experts about ten ethical outcomes. We then offer five specific recommendations to encourage business ethics faculty and decision makers to improve the teaching of business ethics.     

Ethical Differences Between Men and Women in The Sales Profession

This research addresses the question of whether men and women in sales differ in their ethical attitudes and decision making. The study asked 209 subjects to respond to 20 ethical scenarios, half of which were "relational" and half "non-relational." The study concludes (1) that there are significant ethical differences between the sexes in situations that involve relational issues, but not in non-relational situations, and (2) that gender-based ethical differences change with age and years of experience. The implications of these finding for sales organizations are discussed.     

The Relationship Between General Ethical Judgments and Copying Behavior at Work

Electronic technologies, in general, and computer-oriented technologies specifically have had a tremendous impact on all aspects of business. One area of increased concern is the protection of intellectual properties -- notably copyrights -- within the boundaries of the broadly defined technology industry. While the ability to share copyrighted information has always existed at the most basic levels, the advent of the information age has allowed the sharing of this information to take place in potentially greater quantities and without a loss of quality. As such, copying creates a major threat to industries dealing in the production and distribution of copyrightable creations. The focus of this paper is to better understand how the ethical judgments of employees regarding the opportunities to recreate copyrighted works via traditional and newer technologies impact assessments of copying behavior in the workplace.