Normative fundraising ethics: A review of the field

The ethics of fundraising has received scant attention in the academic literature, while there is not a huge amount in the grey and practitioner literature either. There is little that explicitly describes normative theories of fundraising—broad concepts of how fundraising ought to be practised, from which recommendions for applied ethical practice can be drawn. This is the first review of the literature on fundraising ethics, articulating, synthesing and naming (often for the first time) 14 ethical theories/lenses that can be inferred (few are explicitly stated as normative ethical theories) from the literature. In so doing, this review provides scholars and practitioners with a much firmer conceptual foundation for examining and developing professional fundraising ethics, and for analysing applied practice and finding solutions to the ethical dilemmas in applied practice.     

Developing a children's rights approach to fundraising with children in primary schools and the ethics of cultivating philanthropic citizenship

Fundraising literature predominantly focuses on adult donors, with limited literature addressing younger donors, particularly children, and virtually no discussion on the normative ethics which inform fundraising with children. Addressing this gap, this article examines the ethical dilemmas posed by the mainstreaming of charity fundraising in primary schools. Regardless of high levels of participation, research with primary school pupils shows that children's engagement in fundraising activities is often passive, with little decision making afforded to children. First, we question the ethics of passively engaging children in the fundraising relationship. Second, we question the role of fundraising more broadly in helping to cultivate children's philanthropic citizenship, suggesting that current fundraising mechanisms in schools are counter-intuitive to fostering long-term philanthropic engagement. We argue that by critically engaging children in the process of giving, children develop a deeper understanding of the cause areas that matter to them, which cultivates a longer-term commitment to philanthropy. This is potentially a different goal than that of many organisations involving schools in fundraising, where the focus is on incentivising transactional fundraising efforts aiming to raise as much money as possible and thus raises particular ethical challenges which must be considered. In this paper we draw on previous research and established frameworks for understanding philanthropic behaviour to explore the ethical challenges of fundraising with children in schools and present a pathway towards a more child-led, children's rights approach to fundraising in primary schools.     

Does feminism belong in business ethics?

Contemporary society is experiencing dramatic shifts in its expectations for business and its practices. Within the academic realm two voices of change are the “feminist” and “business ethics” perspectives; unfortunately, these two perspectives often advocate conflicting expectations for business organizations. The purpose of this article is to provide an analysis of the expectations each perspective advocates, and to draw relevant implications for future business practices. Our general conclusion is that the feminist perspective maintains a system of gender dichotomies and fails to recognize shifts in the balance of powers. In contrast, a business ethics perspective moves beyond gender issues and dichotomous systems to the recognition that contemporary society is comprised of minorities, and that the rights of all minorities must be recognized and balanced. We suggest that the feminist perspective must reposition with the rapid shifts currently occurring within our society before it can be a “voice” that should be listened to by business organizations.     

The separation of law and justice: Managing impressions of corporate ethics programs

This article is based on the study of two companies that differ in their definition of thics, one with a narrower definition than the other. The one with the narrower definition invited skepticism about its commitment to the spirit of ethics but was better to claims made against their own standards and language. The implications of these findings for corporate ethics programs are discussed.     

The ethics of corporate governance in public sector organizations

The current climate of increased accountability in public sector organizations has brought to public attention the ethical dimension of corporate governance. This article presents a conceptually informed method for undertaking of an ethically focused audit corporate governance. The conceptual-theoretical terrain is set out in three dimensions: ethics as applied moral philosophy; equity as social justice; and corporate governance as the moral health of an organization. At an operational level, the conceptual model proposed provides a framework to evaluate the overall integrity of an organization and embraces the inter-related themes of individual responsibility, social equity and political responsibility. A method for ethical audits is also set out. It emphasizes the significance of key personnel in (re)producing and challenging the organizational ethos, while recognizing the necessary limitations placed on researchers' commitment to anonymity and confidentiality in the collection, interpretation and analysis of data, and in the eventual sharing of such data.     

Relational care in communication as the basis of nonprofit fundraising: Theorizing professional ethics based in stewardship and ethics of care

At its core, fundraising is relationship building. Therefore, ethical fundraising requires cultivating genuine, care-based relationships between various stakeholders by considering relational goals and communicative practices. We advance an ethics of care-oriented approach toward fundraising based in nurturing authentic relationships with multiple organizational stakeholders, including donors, employees, beneficiaries, and volunteers. Drawing upon ethics of care and stewardship scholarship based in public relations, the purpose of this article is to propose relational care in communication through dialogue as an ethical springboard of nonprofit fundraising.     

Culturally responsive relational reflexive ethics in research: the three rs

In this article, the authors define ethics, discuss why researchers should care about ethics, and briefly review the history of ethics and the surrounding contemporary debate as related to research, the development of research ethics codes, research ethics legislation, and the formation of the human subjects research review boards in the West with an emphasis on the United States’ Institutional Review Board. They then explicate the difference between minimalist ethical codes, which all respected researchers must adhere to, and an aspirational ethical stance. Culturally Responsive Relational Reflexive Ethics (CRRRE) is then advanced as a viable aspirational ethical stance for the research community. Finally, the authors draw on their own research for examples of ethical dilemmas involving ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, and power that CRRRE has helped illuminate.     

Ethics of Care as a theory of normative fundraising ethics

Little normative ethical theory exists in the nonprofit marketing literature. Previous attempts at an ethical framework for the field of nonprofit fundraising fell short of fully considering the full spectrum of relationships involved in fundraising practice. We introduce the concept of Ethics of Care, an ethical theory that centers around relationships and interpersonal well-being, as a philosophical foundation for professional ethics in the field of fundraising. We believe this theory provides a suitable framework in which to ground questions of professional ethics for nonprofit fundraising professionals. The adoption of Ethics of Care as a normative ethical theory for fundraising will allow applied ethical questions in the field to be explored in a way that more fully addresses all parties involved in fundraising and affected by its outcomes. Our paper illustrates the process of applying the foundational principles in specific ethical quandaries found within fundraising and aims to address the omission of the beneficiary in the majority of previous ethical frameworks and promote a new set of standards that fully incorporates and balances all stakeholders' needs.     

The Innovation Imperative: An analysis of the ethics of the imperative to innovate in public sector service delivery

Innovating to improve public service is regarded as potentially obligatory, not merely laudable, part of good public management. However, the moral content of an obligation to innovate is not well understood. How can we innovate ethically? In academic bioethics and research ethics, the obligatory nature of the ‘research imperative’ is discussed and criticized. In this article, I outline the content of what I call the ‘innovation imperative’ and draw a parallel between the innovation imperative and the research imperative, arguing that the ethical principles that govern innovation in public service are similar to those governing research imperative in biomedical sciences.     

Strategies for Improving Codes of Ethics Implementation in Construction Organizations

It is necessary to reconsider the assumptions upon which the process of implementing compliance with ethical programs rests, in both theoretical and practical terms. These assumptions should hinge on organizational enablers that allow embeddedness of codes of ethics in the web of an organization's processes. This article sets out to describe an approach that will facilitate implementation of codes of ethics in construction organizations and a comprehensive literature survey approach is adopted to achieve this. The paper equally employs the application of the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) model as a tool to stimulate ethical behavior in an organization, with the focus on the enabler criterion of the model. The authors discuss organizational enablers in relation to the implementation of ethical codes. The study demonstrates how ethics can be managed in an organization by proposing a framework to enhance codes of ethics embeddedness in the web of an organization. The paper indicates current research gaps and future opportunities for both academics and practitioners.     

Applying a stakeholder management approach to ethics in charitable fundraising

While nonprofit accountability literature recognizes many stakeholders, even theoretically grounded approaches to fundraising ethics tend to focus more narrowly on donors, organizations, and their missions. This paper draws on business ethics scholarship by proposing a stakeholder management approach to ethics in fundraising. This approach foregrounds intentional examination of the multiple stakeholders in the fundraising process: the organization; its donors; current beneficiaries; the broader population within the issue; the fundraisers themselves; and the community. Following stakeholder theory, ethical fundraising activities must align with the charitable mission of the organization, and take into account the legitimate interests of those groups and individuals who can affect, or be affected by, its activities. The process of intentionally identifying, prioritizing, mapping claims, engaging with, and monitoring stakeholders offers fundraisers, nonprofit executives, and members of governing and advisory boards a pragmatic means of aligning fundraising efforts with the mission, values, and long-term strategy of their organizations.     

Do universities knowledge spillovers impact on new firm’s growth? Empirical evidence from UK

The paper explores the effect of scientific institutions on firm’s growth, coupling regional science and entrepreneurship approaches. We focus on the role of universities, largely considered in the literature as the main source of knowledge spillovers. To this purpose, we centre our attention on UK public companies on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM), a market dedicated to young and growing companies in both science and non-science based industries. In the paper we investigate the growth determinants of 231 listed firms which have gone public during the period going from 1995 to 2006. To our purposes, in the empirical analysis we use the Gibrat’s Law of Proportionate Effects model. The results supports the hypothesis that, controlling for firm’s idiosyncratic factors and external forces, both universities knowledge input and output are important determinants of the growth of entrepreneurial firms listed on the AIM.

The impact of sports ethics of professional baseball player to the development of sports industry in Taiwan

Once countries develop economically to a certain degree, they typically develop sports industries to further improve the welfare of their citizens and to stimulate further economic development. The successful development of sports industries, however, is affected by the impact of many environmental factors. The Enron scandal has caused ethical topics to become a subject of worldwide focus. This paper studies Taiwanese professional baseball to examine how ethical factors impact the survival and development of baseball teams. In reality, the operation of professional baseball is primarily affected by the impact of the ethical views of players as well as cultural environmental factors. These factors interact to form a complex and dynamic system. This study uses system dynamics to examine the systemic structure of the development of Taiwanese professional baseball. We present a dynamic model for the development of professional baseball and examine the impact of sports ethics and societal gambling trends on the development of professional baseball in Taiwan, and then discuss relevant topics.     

论会计职业道德教育

本文认为,要从根本上抑制目前会计信息大面积失真,改善会计领域的不道德行为,就必须加强对会计行为人的职业道德教育,提高会计行为人的道德素质。本文在论述会计职业道德教育的迫切性与主要内容的基础上,探讨了现阶段进行会计职业道德教育的主要方式与途经。     

The role of human resources in ethics/compliance management: a fairness perspective

Many large corporations now have formal programs for managing ethical behavior and legal compliance. But the often minor role of human resources (HR) in companies' ethics management efforts is problematic. This is because ethics management efforts are likely to raise questions of fairness, and trigger a fairness heuristic among employees that can generate important outcomes for the ethics program specifically and the organization generally. Relying on research on fairness in organizations and corporate ethics practices, we explain why the extensive involvement of HR in corporate ethics programs is important to the perceived fairness, and thus the likely outcomes (e.g., employee commitment), of those programs.     

Hospital ethics committees and the future of health care decision making

In an era of increased patient decision making and limited resources, the solving of ethical dilemmas requires more than the traditional top-down approach. This article examines the use of ethics committees in hospitals located in Alabama. A significant minority of the hospitals do not have committees, despite increasing calls for ethics committees in the literature and by regulatory and accreditation agencies. The article also describes the typical composition of a hospital ethics committee as well as the means by which hospitals without committees solve ethical problems.     

Implications to ethics education of recent neuroscience research on emotions

As it is currently taught, instruction in engineering ethics centers on cognitive learning even to the extent of suppressing the involvement of emotions in ethical decision making. The common belief is that emotional involvement will increase the likelihood of poor judgment. Recent neuroscience research with positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging indicates that emotions actually play a significant role in ethical decision making. It then follows that emotions should be part of ethics education: That is, discussions of ethics should not be limited to cognitive thought. Instruction to improve emotional maturity must be accompanied by teaching of cognitive subject matter if long‐term learning is to occur. Emotions influence the solution of ethical problems as they affect the accuracy of the problem assessment and the accuracy, intensity, and duration of an emotive response. Specific emotions that relate to ethical decisions are listed. A theory of emotive learning is presented, and its application to the teaching of engineering ethics is discussed. Strategies for emotive learning are also presented.     

CPA职业道德博弈分析

本文运用博弈分析方法对CPA职业道德进行了分析,发现CPA职业道德状况是CPA审计市场诸因素的复合函数,分别运用不完全信息动态博弈和静态博弈方法,对CPA审计机制和CPA行业内部的诸因素对CPA职业道德的影响进行了分析,并提出了相应的治理对策。     

Communicating the Ethos of Codes of Ethics in Corporate Australia, 1995–2001: Whose Rights, Whose Responsibilities?

This paper considers the commitment to business ethics of the top 500 companies operating in the Australian private sector and communicates the results of a longitudinal study conducted from 1995 to 2001. Primary data was obtained (in 1995 and again in 2001) via a self-administered mail questionnaire distributed to a census of these top 500 Australian companies. This commitment of each company to their code of ethics was indicated and measured via a range of methods used by organizations to communicate the ethos of their codes to employees. Just as they were in 1995, it would appear that companies in 2001 still are good at ensuring that their rights are protected, but at the same time they do not seem to take on the responsibility to ensure that employees' rights are just as well protected. This double standard leads to cynicism towards the current business ethics processes inherent in Australian companies.     

浅析以企业伦理文化为核心的企业文化建设

文章从伦理学的视角分析了企业伦理文化的现状,以及以企业伦理文化建设为核心的企业文化建设的必要性和建议,阐述了企业必须重视以企业伦理文化为核心的文化建设。