Student Ethical Perceptions and Ethical Action Propensities: An Analysis of Situation Familiarity

Recently McCuddy and Peery (1996) have suggested that business students may not respond the same way to unfamiliar business ethical dilemmas as they would to more familiar academic ethical dilemmas. The purpose of this study was to present the same students with both unfamiliar business dilemmas as well as possibly more familiar academic dilemmas in order to examine this issue.Findings of the study revealed that students did not exhibit different perceptions of the unethical actions performed in the academic and accounting/business ethical vignettes. However, the students indicated that both they and their peers would be more likely to act unethically to resolve the dilemmas in the accounting/business cases than in the academic cases. This finding is troubling in that it suggests that students either feel less compelled to act ethically in business, or that they perceive that ethical standards in the business world are generally low when compared to their current educational environment. In addition, the students in the study maintained the same halo effect (i.e., the difference between an individual's perception of their likelihood of performing an unethical action compared to their perception of their peers' likelihood to perform the same unethical action) across the two types of ethical dilemma.     

Ethical Theory and Business Practices: The Case of Discourse Ethics

By focusing on the reasoned debate in the discourse-ethical approach to business ethics, this paper discusses the possibilities and limitations of moral reasoning as well as applied economic and business ethics. Business ethics, it is contended, can be looked at from the standpoint of two criteria: justification and application. These criteria are used to compare three approaches: the Integrative Business Ethics, developed by Swiss philosopher Peter Ulrich, the Cultural Business Ethics of the Nuremberg School in German business ethics, and the concept of “Good Conservation” by Frederick Bird. It is argued that discourse-ethical approaches can be called upon for justifying moral principles. Improving the chances of their application, however, necessitates a good understanding of lifeworlds and culturally developed institutional settings. Bearing this in mind, further research perspectives stressing a linkage between discourse-ethical and critical approaches in social sciences are suggested.Dr. Thomas Beschorner is head of the research group “Social Learning and Sustainability” at University of Oldenburg, Germany and currently Visiting-Professor at McGill University, Montreal, Canada     

Ethical Aspects in Nordic Business Mergers: The Case of Electro-Business

Postmerger integration is a highly challenging and demanding task. Its success depends not only on economic factors but also on the organisational members' feelings and their personal contribution to the new entity. Mergers are usually made for the sake of profitability in the first place, whereas less attention is paid to employees in such situations. This article describes various ethical observations made in our study on corporate mergers in the Nordic Electro-business industry. We examine how the organisational change was experienced by personnel, what kinds of ethical reflections surfaced in different phases of the process, and what conclusions might be drawn from them. The main focus is on the ethical meanings that emerged in our interviewees' stories spontaneously, without the topic of ethics having been separately brought up in the interview situation. The organisational members: we interviewed 35 electro-business employees who were either transferred from Vattenfall's contracting unit to the acquiring company or were already working there at the time of the merger. These persons were interviewed twice: first in 2001, the year of the initial merger, and again in 2005, 4 years from the start of the process and 1 year from the final ownership change. The merger process seemed to lead to decreased responsibility among the organisational members, which highlights the discrepancy between genuine ethical thinking and executive talk. Our study also revealed a dramatic shift in the moral attitudes of the managers who fell from power in the turmoil of organisational change. This moral dimension is evident in their sharply critical argumentation against the new operating model and new corporate management, as well as in their eventual indifference and non-commitment to the organisation. The ethical meanings of 'the good life' and a happy work community slowly disintegrated and were replaced by a longing for the earlier communality and sense of togetherness in their old organisation. This meant that 'the good life' would have to be sought elsewhere.     

The Contract of Employment - Ethical Dimensions

A review of the literature indicates that faculty, students, and employers recognize the importance of professional behaviors for a successful career. These professional behaviors were defined by business school faculty to include honesty and ethical decision making, regular attendance and punctuality, professional dress and appearance, participation in professional organizations, and appropriate behavior during meetings. This paper presents the results of a survey administered to managers, faculty, and students about how business school professors can teach these professional behaviors. A hypothesis was tested that managers, professors, and students differ in their perceptions about what is appropriate professional behavior. Using a scale of strongly agree to strongly disagree to respond to critical incidents, one-way ANOVA indicated no group differences for items about cheating, plagiarism, and helping students to work projects on schedule. Group differences were found for ethics items (raising course grade for the purpose of tuition reimbursement, stopping excessive use of school printers, simplifying course work to accommodate weaker students), time management items (making accommodations for students unable to regularly attend class, refusing to admit late students), appearance items (requiring students to dress in suits for major presentations, counseling a student with facial piercing), and for items about required activities inside and outside of the classroom. Allen Hall received his Ph.D. in education from the University of Iowa. Currently he is an associate professor at the State University of New York (SUNY) Institute of Technology. His research projects center around surveys designed to measure changes in ethical awareness. His teaching area is Business & Society. He currently studies management issues in non-profit organizations. Lisa Berardino received her Ph.D. in management from Virginia Tech. Currently she is an associate professor at the State University of New York (SUNY) Institute of Technology and coordinator for the Master of Business Administration program. Her publications focus on identifying, measuring and building the critical skills that business students need in today’s workplace. Her teaching area is human resource management and compensation. Her current research projects center on how to build the competency of professional behavior and how to teach ethics.     

The Relation Between Ethical Behaviour and Workstress Amongst a Group of Managers Working in Affirmative Action Positions

Unethical acts and reported cases of corruption and commercial crimes in South African business are increasing. Literature studies showed that risk groups (for instance South African managers in affirmative action positions) are functioning in a stressful environment which can give rise to unethical acts. Results pointed out that high stress correlates substantially with: to claim credit for a subordinate's work; to fail to report a co-worker's violation of company policy, to offer potential clients fully paid holidays; and to purchase shares upon hearing privileged company information. In the light of this a number of recommendations were made.     

伦理经营：现代企业管理创新的理性选择

本文从企业内部生产经营活动以及企业与外部的交换活动出发,论述了企业伦理存在的必然性,并详细阐述了企业伦理的内容和研究意义,提出了实现企业伦理化经营管理的对策建议。     

Case Studies of Ethics Scandals: Effects on Ethical Perceptions of Finance Students

Ethics instructors often use cases to help students understand ethics within a corporate context, but we need to know more about the impact a case-based pedagogy has on students’ ability to make ethical decisions. We used a pre- and post-test methodology to assess the effect of using cases to teach ethics in a finance course. We also wanted to determine whether recent corporate ethics scandals might have impacted students’ perceptions of the importance and prevalence of ethics in business, so we used in-depth case studies of several of the major scandals (e.g., Enron, Tyco, Adelphia). Our results are somewhat surprising since studying ethics scandals positively impacts students’ ethical decision making and their perceptions of the ethics of businesspeople.     

The Ethical Dimension of Managerial Leadership Two Illustrative Case Studies in TQM

In recent decades, Total Quality Management (TQM) has become an important phenomenon in the world of business, but the implications and scope of quality programs are quite different everywhere. Since different explanations have been given, most authors agree that management commitment and leadership are indispensable elements for a successful TQM implementation. Nevertheless, the study of the literature reflects a terminological confusion on this point. The authors of this paper argue that commitment and leadership are not synonymous terms.While committed managers may lead the process of quality using exclusively their formal authority, those who are leaders generate a kind of influence that goes further than that. This paper suggests a multidimensional perception of leadership and upholds that only by considering the ethical dimension of leadership, together with technical and psycho-emotive ones, it is possible to explain more accurately interpersonal influences beyond the scope of power. As an illustrative example of the importance of considering each dimensions, the authors present two case studies of TQM implementation.     

股东代表诉讼与传统诉讼形态之比较

作为对加强公司内部机关之间相互监督机能的补充,股东派生诉讼应运而生,这就要从诉讼法角度将其与传统诉讼制度进行概念和性质上的比较并探讨相互的整合问题,以便对我国公司法和证券法中涉及到的民事诉讼的条文做些概念上的辨析。     

Affirmative Action Policy and Changing Views

Critiquing any practice, theory, or law, requires understanding the characteristics of the environment which created a need for this law. There are hundreds of different cultures in the world, and each one has its own set of norms, characteristics, and values. What in one country is perceived normal, ethical or unethical, right or wrong, may not be the same somewhere else in the world. The first civilizations begun in Africa and Europe many thousands of years ago when people were hunters and nomads, it is not unreasonable to suspect that many of those traits and characteristics have been socially transferred and/or inherited by future generations. Anthony F. Libertella is the Dean of the School of Business, Adelphi University, Garden City, NY. Sebastian A. Sora is an Associate Professor of Management, Adelphi University, Garden City, NY. Samuel M. Natale is a Professor of Management, Adelphi University, Garden City, NY and, concurrently, Senior Research Associate, Department of Educational Studies, University of Oxford, England.     

Development and Validation of Ethical Computer Self-Efficacy Measure: The Case of Softlifting

The concept of self-efficacy is concerned with people's beliefs in their ability to produce given attainment. It has been widely applied to study human conduct in various settings. This study, based on Albert Bandura's social cognitive theory, proposes the employment of self-efficacy for investigating people's ethical conduct related to computer use. Specifically, an ethical computer self-efficacy (ECSE) construct concerning software piracy is developed and validated. The measurement model of the construct was rigorously tested and validated through confirmatory factor analysis. The results suggest that ECSE can be operationalized as a second-order factor model. The first order constructs are termed use&keep (do not use), distribution (do not distribute), and persuasion (persuade others not to commit piracy). These factors are governed by a second-order construct of ECSE. This construct could be useful to research a wide range of information ethics in the future.     

The Ethical Cycle

Arriving at a moral judgment is not a straightforward or linear process in which ethical theories are simply applied to cases. Instead it is a process in which the formulation of the moral problem, the formulation of possible “solutions”, and the ethical judging of these solutions go hand in hand. This messy character of moral problems, however, does not rule out a systematic approach. In this article, we describe a systematic approach to problem solving that does justice to the complex nature of moral problems and ethical judgment: the ethical cycle. Our goal is to provide a structured and disciplined method of addressing moral problems, which helps to guide a sound analysis of these problems. We will illustrate the usefulness of this cycle with an example. Further, we will discuss two general issues in applied ethics in relation to the proposed ethical cycle: the role of ethical theories and the place of individual judgment versus collective deliberation. Ibo van de Poel (1966) is Assistant Professor of Ethics and Technology at Delft University of Technology. He has done research on the dynamics of technological development, codes of conduct and professional ethics of engineers, the moral acceptability of technological risks, ethics in engineering design, and ethics and responsibiltiy in R&D networks. He has published in, among others, Science, Technology & Humans Values, Research Policy and Science and Engineering Ethics. For more information, see http://www.tbm.tudelft.nl/webstaf/ibop/. Lambèr Royakkers (1967) is Associate Professor of Ethics and Technology at Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands. He studied Philosophy and Social Sciences, Technical Mathematics, and Law. He received his PhD at the Tilburg University in 1996. His dissertation was on the formalisation of normative rules with deontic logic. It has been revised rather thoroughly for the serie Law and Philosophy published by Kluwer Academic in 1998. His research interests include ethics and technology, (collective) responsibility, and logic.     

The Business of Commercial Legal Advice and the Ethical Implications for Lawyers and Their Clients

Company directors and executives seek legal advice outside the company on a regular basis. This advice is meant to be given within the context of the lawyers’ professional obligations and ethical practise. What clients may not appreciate is there is often a conflict of interest between the lawyers’ professional and ethical concerns and the legal advice business. If lawyers follow their business interests, their advice may be incomplete especially in relation to the ethical consequences of that advice. This could lead to a compromise of the clients’ commercial interests and even raise doubts in relation to the legality of the clients’ proposed course of action.     

Discrimination and Disidentification: The Fair-Start Defense of Affirmative Action

The Fair-Start Defense justifies affirmative action preferences as a response to harms caused by race- and sex-based discrimination. Rather than base a justification for preferences on the traditional appeal to self-esteem, I argue they are justified in virtue of the effects institutional discrimination has on the goals and aspirations of its victims. In particular, I argue that institutional discrimination puts women and blacks at an unfair competitive disadvantage by causing academic disidentification. Affirmative action is justified as a means of negating this unfair disadvantage.     

Ethical Decision-Making: A Case for the Triple Font Theory

This paper discusses the philosophical argument and the application of the Triple Font Theory (TFT) for moral evaluation of human acts and attempts to integrate the conceptual components of major moral theories into a systematic internally consistent decision-making model that is theoretically driven. The paper incorporates concepts such as formal and material cooperation and the Principle of Double Effect (PDE) into the theoretical framework. It also advances the thesis that virtue theory ought to be included in any adequate justification of morality and the need to integrate or coordinate notions of virtue into various act-oriented or principles-based ethics. The TFT offers a comprehensive and practical approach to ethical decision-making and is a useful alternative embedded in traditional wisdom. This paper provides a more general framework of the TFT than traditionally presented. Practical judgment is shown to play a constitute role in providing a guide for right action and is the “glue” that integrates the various components of the TFT. Surendra Arjoon is an Associate Professor of Business Ethics at the University of the West Indies, Trinidad. He has served as Chair, Department of Management Studies and as Associate Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences. He is also Vice President of the Trinidad & Tobago Economics Association. His work has appeared in the Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Markets and Morality, Global Development Studies, Applied Financial Economics, and Social and Economic Studies.     

Organizational Factors Encouraging Ethical Decision Making: An Exploration into the Case of an Exemplar

What factors in the organizational culture of an ethically exemplary corporation are responsible for encouraging ethical decision making? This question was analyzed through an exploratory case study of a top pharmaceutical company that is a global leader in ethics. The participating organization is renowned in public opinion polls of ethics, credibility, and trust. This research explored organizational culture, communication in issues management and public relations, management theory, and deontological or utilitarian moral philosophy as factors that might encourage ethical analysis. Our understanding of organiza tional ethics is enhanced by elucidating factors the case revealed as encouraging ethical analysisan organizational culture that emphasizes the importance of ethics, Theory Y management, a symmetrical worldview valuing innovation and dialogue, a counseling role for issues management or public relations in the dominant coalition, rewarding ethical behavior, ethical analysis using moral philosophy, consistency between individual values and organizational philosophy, and ethics training. These factors, and perhaps others as yet unidentified, worked together to create an environment that encouraged ethical decision making at the exemplar organization.     

Codes of Ethics as Signals for Ethical Behavior

This study investigated effects of codes of ethics on perceptions of ethical behavior. Respondents from companies with codes of ethics (n = 465) rated role set members (top management, supervisors, peers, subordinates, self) as more ethical and felt more encouraged and supported for ethical behavior than respondents from companies without codes (n = 301). Key aspects of the organizational climate, such as supportiveness for ethical behavior, freedom to act ethically, and satisfaction with the outcome of ethical problems were impacted by the presence of an ethics code. The mere presence of a code of ethics appears to have a positive impact on perceptions of ethical behavior in organizations, even when respondents cannot recall specific content of the code.     

Characteristics of Ethical Business Cultures

The purpose of this study was to identify general characteristics attributed to ethical business cultures by executives from a variety of industries. Our research identified five clusters of characteristics: Mission- and Values-Driven, Stakeholder Balance, Leadership Effectiveness, Process Integrity, and Long-term Perspective. We propose that these characteristics be used as a foundation of a comprehensive model that can be engaged to influence operational practices in creating and sustaining an ethical business culture.     

论股东派生诉讼与集团诉讼的结合

股东派生诉讼制度与集团诉讼制度有密切的联系。我国在建构股东派生诉讼制度的过程中应注意其与集团诉讼制度的结合。在股东派生诉讼中,原告股东应有广泛的代表性;公司和法院对于原告的起诉应当发布公告;公司原告的撤诉与和解应保障其他股东的知情权;派生诉讼的判决和法院批准的和解协议对全体股东均有约束力。     

Integrating Ethics into Action Theory and Organizational Theory

A serious attempt to integrate ethics in management was done by Professor Juan Antonio Pérez López (1934–1996). His thought represents a break with current scholarly thinking on these subjects. The purpose of this article is to explain some of the most significant aspects of his theories, relating basically to his recourse to ethics as what defines the characteristic behavior of human beings, considered as individuals and as members of organizations. Pérez López used the anthropological conception underlying the ethics of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas to build a solid base for that ethics, starting from the decision-making process. He then used that ethical base to point to the kind of action theory and organization theory that could most effectively assist the human development of people and organizations.