Ethics and HRM: Theoretical and Conceptual Analysis

Despite the ongoing consideration of the ethical nature of human resource management (HRM), little research has been conducted on how morality and ethics are represented in the discourse, activities and lived experiences of human resource (HR) professionals. In this paper, we connect the thinking and lived experiences of HR professionals to an alternative ethics, rooted in the work of Bauman (Modernity and the Holocaust, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1989; Theory, Culture and Society 7:5?C38, 1990; Postmodern Ethics, Blackwell, Oxford, 1991; Approaches to Social Enquiry, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1993; Life in Fragments, Blackwell, Oxford, 1995) and Levinas (Otherwise than Being, or, Beyond Essence, Duquesne University Press, Pittsburgh, PA, 1998). We argue that the study of HRM and ethics should be contextualized within the discourses used, the practices and activities of HR professionals. Through the analysis of interview data from 40 predominantly Canadian HR practitioners and managers we experiment with Bauman??s notion of ??moral impulse?? to help us understand how HRM is both a product and perpetuator of moral neutralization in organizations. We suggest that HRM as it is practiced is concerned with distancing, depersonalizing, and dissembling, and acts in support of the ??moral?? requirements of business, not of people. However, we also recognize that HR practitioners and managers are often confronted with and conflicted by actions and decisions that they are required to take, therefore opening possibilities and hope for an alternative ethical HRM.     

In Defence of ‘Demand’ Deposits: Contractual Solutions to the Barnett and Block,and Bagus and Howden Debate

This article contributes to a recent debate between Barnett and Block (J Bus Ethics 88(4): 711–716, 2009), Bagus and Howden (J Bus Ethics 90(3): 399–406, 2009), Barnett and Block (J Bus Ethics 100: 299–238, 2011), Cachanosky (J Bus Ethics 104: 219–221, 2011) and Bagus and Howden (J Bus Ethics 106: 295–300, 2012a) regarding the conceptual distinction between demand deposits and time deposits. It is argued that from an economic perspective there is nothing inherently fraudulent or illegitimate about deposit accounts that are available ‘on demand’, but that this relies on certain contractual provisions. Particular attention is drawn to option clauses and withdrawal clauses, which “solve” the problems raised by Barnett and Block, and Bagus and Howden. Previous authors have also neglected the asset side of banks balance sheets, and this is shown to further justify the legitimacy of fractional reserve banking.     

A Multi-Agent Model for Overlapping Negotiations

In the last few years, research on multi-agent systems has addressed different aspects of intelligent negotiations using methods developed in different domains including game theory, decision theory, and economic models. The research proposed in Andersson and Sandholm (1999), Sandholm (1993), Sandholm and Lesser (1995) and Aknine et?al. (2004), Aknine (2002) are significant examples. However, only some of this work focuses on problems related to complex negotiations, particularly those concerning new generation applications. This new research raises fundamental difficulties we have encountered, especially in overlapping negotiations and combined negotiations. This article is interested essentially in overlapping negotiations, which include several agent roles in a same negotiation. One or more agents may play each of these roles. This work shows that the high-level negotiation models are necessary in order to control the execution of overlapping negotiation processes, since, in these negotiations we are facing both classical problems of multi-agent negotiations based on two agents’ roles and the problems concerned with the interdependence of these negotiations. Synchronization of these different processes is thus necessary because of the multiplicity of the roles. Thus, this paper presents a formalized negotiation model, which deals with this problem. It gives a theoretical analysis of the suggested model and discusses the results of the experimental evaluation. To perform this evaluation, we use the application of intelligent service agencies on the Internet.     

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.     

Compatibility Under Differentiated Duopoly with Network Externalities: A Comment

Chen and Chen (J Ind Compet Trade 11:43?55, 2011) analyze the effects of compatibility under system product Cournot competition with network externalities. They show that a firm’s optimal strategy is to set an incompatible system standard, even though perfect compatibility is socially optimal. In this case, a social dilemma arises. However, their result depends on a specific assumption about the network size. We use the framework of Shy (1995) to modify this assumption, and hence show that the social dilemma identified by Chen and Chen (J Ind Compet Trade 11:43?55, 2011) does not arise.     

Ethical Decision Making in a Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Situation: The Role of Moral Absolutes and Social Consensus

Individuals are downloading copyrighted materials at escalating rates (Hill 2007; Siwek 2007). Since most materials shared within these networks are copyrighted works, providing, exchanging, or downloading files is considered to be piracy and a violation of intellectual property rights (Shang et al. 2008). Previous research indicates that personal moral philosophies rooted in moral absolutism together with social context may impact decision making in ethical dilemmas; however, it is yet unclear which motivations and norms contextually impact moral awareness in a peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing context (Shang et al. 2008). In sum, factors affecting the decision to share copyrighted material require further clarification and investigation (Shang et al. 2008). The purpose of this study was to use a consumer-based scenario and multiple ethics measures to explore how idealism, formalism, and perceived social consensus impact users’ propensity to recognize that the sharing of copyrighted media through P2P networks was an ethical issue and their subsequent ethical intentions. Results showed that high levels of idealism and formalism were associated with an increased recognition that file sharing was an ethical issue, but neither construct had a direct effect on ethical intention. Strong social consensus among respondents that other people consider file sharing to be unethical was also positively related to the recognition that file sharing was an ethical issue, and ethical recognition was a moderate predictor of intention not to engage in file sharing. Finally, a post hoc mediation analysis indicated that idealism, formalism, and social consensus operated through recognition of an ethical issue to impact ethical intention (indirect-only mediation).     

Workplace Romance 2.0: Developing a Communication Ethics Model to Address Potential Sexual Harassment from Inappropriate Social Media Contacts Between Coworkers

This article examines ethical implications from workplace romances that may subsequently turn into sexual harassment through the use of social media technologies, such as YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, text messaging, IMing, and other forms of digital communication between office colleagues. We examine common ethical models such as Jones (Acad Manag Rev 16:366–395, 1991) issue-contingent decision-making model, Rest’s (Moral development: Advances in research and theory, 1986) Stages of Ethical Decision-Making model, and Pierce and Aguinis’s (J Org Behav 26(6):727–732,2005) review of workplace romance versus sexual harassment issues. The article makes a contribution by developing a new communication ethics model that includes response positive and response negative contingencies to guide decision-making about inappropriate social media contacts that spillover into the workplace. In addition, we recommend that human resource personnel take a more active role in communicating appropriate ethical rules of conduct concerning the use of social media technologies inside and outside the office.     

Challenges to Legitimacy at the Forest Stewardship Council

The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is a global private governance system overseeing the sustainability and biodiversity of the world forestry system through certification of forests and forestry processes and products, and is perceived as the strongest of the various certification schemes available (Domask, Globalization and NGOs: Transforming Business, Government, and Society, 2003; Gulbrandsen, Global Environmental Politics, 2004). It has seen more success in developed than developing countries in terms of amount of forest certified and number of chain-of-custody certificates issued, raising questions as to its ability to promote biodiversity Gulbrandsen, Global Environmental Politics, 2004). A number of challenges have risen to the pragmatic and moral legitimacy of the FSC as a global governance system: alternative certification schemes, output and market access, cost of certification, plantations, and illegal logging. I examine each of these challenges as they pertain to the dimensions of pragmatic and moral legitimacy of the FSC. I conclude with a discussion of theoretical implications for global governance systems using ecolabel schemes, as well as a discussion of practical implications for the FSC in particular.     

Psychometric vs. C-OAR-SE measures of brand love: A reply to Rossiter

Rossiter (Marketing Lett 23: 905–916, 2012) provides a critique of the brand love measure from Batra et al. (J Marketing 76: 1–16, 2012) and offers a new measure of brand love to be used in its stead. In this reply, we argue that our measure is more consistent with the best available understanding on love and brand love. We also note several serious problems in the underlying definition of love used by Rossiter and problems in the way his definition is operationalized in his measure.     

Legitimacy and Organizational Sustainability

The literature regarding social and environmental sustainability of business focuses primarily on rationales for adopting sustainability strategies and operational practices in support of that goal. In contrast, we examine sustainability from a perspective that has received far less research attention??attitudes that inform managerial decision-making. We develop a conceptual model that identifies six elemental categories of attitudes that can be held independently or aggregated to yield a meta-attitude representing the legitimacy of sustainability. Our model distinguishes among three types of internally held attitudes and externally perceived subjective norms: pragmatic, moral, and cognitive. We propose a refinement of Ajzen??s (In: Kuhl J, Beckmann J (eds) Action control: from cognition to behavior, 1985; Organ Behav Hum Decis Process 50:179?C211, 1991) Theory of planned behavior (TPB) that incorporates these sub-categories of personal attitudes and subjective norms. Practical implications are discussed including how organizations considering adopting sustainability programs might use the model as a conceptual tool to help achieve and assess program success.     

It is all in the mix: The interactive effect of music tempo and mode on in-store sales

Though practitioners have relied on tempo as a criterion to design in-store music, scant attention has been devoted to the mode of musical selections, and no consideration has been given to the potential for the interactive effects of low-level structural elements of music on actual retail sales. The current research reports a field experiment wherein the positive main effect of slow tempo on actual sales reported by Milliman (J Marketing 46 (3):86–91, 1982, J Cons Res 13 (2):286–289, 1986) is qualified by musical mode. A significant interaction between tempo and mode was evidenced, such that music in a major mode did not vary in effectiveness by tempo while music in a minor mode was significantly more effective when accompanied by a slow tempo. That is, the Milliman effect was eliminated for music in a major mode. Implications of our findings and directions for further research are discussed.     

Bayesian multi-resolution spatial analysis with applications to marketing

Marketing researchers have become increasingly interested in spatial datasets. A main challenge of analyzing spatial data is that researchers must a priori choose the size and make-up of the areal units, hence the resolution of the analysis. Analyzing the data at a resolution that is too high may mask ??macro?? patterns, while analyzing the data at a resolution that is too low may result in aggregation bias. Thus, ideally marketing researchers would want a ??data-driven?? method to determine the ??optimal?? resolution of analysis, and at the same time automatically explore the same dataset under different resolutions, to obtain a full set of empirical insights to help with managerial decision making. In this paper, we propose a new approach for multi-resolution spatial analysis that is based on Bayesian model selection. We demonstrate our method using two recent marketing datasets from published studies: (i) the Netgrocer spatial sales data in Bell and Song (Quantitative Marketing and Economics 5:361?C400, 2007), and (ii) the Pathtracker^? data in Hui et al. (Marketing Science 28:566?C572, 2009b; Journal of Consumer Research 36:478?C493, 2009c) that track shoppers?? in-store movements. In both cases, our method allows researchers to not only automatically select the resolution of the analysis, but also analyze the data under different resolutions to understand the variation in insights and robustness to the level of aggregation.     

The Relationship between the Integration of Faith and Work with Life and Job Outcomes

Gallup surveys consistently show that nine in 10 Americans express a belief in God (Nash, Business, religion, and spirituality: A new synthesis, 2003), while more than 45 % claim to have some awareness of God on the job (Nash and McLellan, Church on Sunday, Work on Monday: The Challenges of Fusing Christian Values with Business Life, 2001). Recently, Lynn et al. (Journal of Business Ethics 85:227–243, 2009) argued that the ability to integrate the specific beliefs and practices of one’s faith with the work one does represent an important although neglected area of research. As such, they developed and demonstrated convergent validity for the faith at work scale, designed to measure the extent to which individuals believe they are able to integrate their Judaeo-Christian beliefs and practices and their work. In a subsequent study, Lynn et al. (Human Relations 64:675–701, 2010) demonstrated that the faith at work scale was related to faith maturity, church attendance, age, and denominational strictness, and negatively associated with organizational size. No research, however, has examined the possible positive benefits of integrating faith and work. I therefore developed and tested hypotheses concerning the relationship between the faith at work scale and seven important life and work outcomes (satisfaction with life, intent to leave one’s job, self-rated job performance, job satisfaction, and three forms of organizational commitment). In all, four of seven hypotheses were confirmed.     

Alternative Investment Market: A Way to Promote Entrepreneurship

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between firm performance after the IPO and its entrepreneurial orientation (EO). In our work we want to test if entrepreneurial oriented firms show a better market performance signalling that investors valuate it positively. To this purpose, we focus on a particular sample of entrepreneurial firms, i.e. companies that went public on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) through IPO during the period from 1995 to 2006. Along the lines of Miller (Manage Sci 29:770–791, 1983), Covin and Slevin (Entrep Theory Pract 16:7–25, 1991) and Lumpkin and Dess (Acad Manage Rev 21:135–172, 1996), firms’ entrepreneurial orientation is measured in terms of risk taking, innovation and proactivity. Following the literature in management on investor valuation we use the percent price premium as dependent variable of our model. Our findings confirm a positive impact of entrepreneurial orientation on investors’ valuation. The results of this work underline the relevance of secondary markets, such as the AIM, as a valuable alternative to traditional financial institutions in providing capital to small and entrepreneurial companies.     

The positive and negative effects of inventory on category purchase: An empirical analysis

Product inventory exerts two countervailing forces on the probability of purchase: More inventory on hand reduces the need to purchase; however, theory suggests higher levels of inventory can drive up consumption, thereby increasing the chance of purchase. Moreover, consumers have biased estimations of their own inventory—especially at high levels of inventory (Chandon and Wansink, 2006), which again suggests a positive relationship between inventory and purchase probability. We model the negative (standard) and positive effects of inventory on the probability of purchase. The model is calibrated on ten product categories and fits better than the standard nested logit and an alternative developed by Ailawadi and Neslin (1998). The elasticity of purchase incidence with respect to inventory represents these opposing forces in an intuitive way, implying an inventory threshold below (above) which the net effect is positive (negative). Estimated thresholds are plausible across categories, with the food categories of hot dogs, ice cream and soft drinks showing the largest effects.     

Relational Psychoanalytic Perspective on the Negotiation Dialogue: Using the Rorschach Inkblot Method for Assessing Integrative Complexity

Negotiation theory encompasses a broad range of phenomena and makes use of a variety of perspectives. Applications of theoretical constructs referring to different realms of personality functioning (e.g., cognitive, affective, interpersonal) for understanding negotiators’ decision making have become quite common in the field. Nevertheless, the methodology used for personality assessment still needs to be broadened so as to encompass a variety of assessment tools that can be used for obtaining a more comprehensive view on negotiators’ personality functioning in relation to task performance. In line with two previous studies, published in Group Decision and Negotiation (Tibon in Group Decis Negot 9(1):1–15, 2000, Group Decis Negot 17(6):541–552, 2008) we suggest using the Rorschach Inkblot Method to extend our understanding of mental functioning within the context of negotiators’ decision making.     

Vulnerability and the Basis of Business Ethics: From Fiduciary Duties to Professionalism

This paper examines the role of vulnerability in the basis of business ethics by criticizing its role in giving a moral substantial character to fiduciary duties to shareholders. The target is Marcoux’s (Bus Ethics Q 13(1):1–24, 2003) argument for morally substantial fiduciary duties vis-à-vis the multifiduciary stakeholder theory. Rather than proceed to support the stakeholder paradigm, a conception of vulnerability is combined with Heath’s 2004) “market failure” view of the ethical obligations of managers as falling out of their roles as professionals involved in the institution of the market. The result is the core of a theoretically defensible and managerially motivating and deployable ethic.     

Comment on Acs and Varga: Entrepreneurship, agglomeration and technological change

Acs and Varga (Small Bus Econ 24:323–334, 2005) employ GEM cross-national, industrial-level data for nine selected European countries in order to investigate the link between entrepreneurship, agglomeration and technological growth. Testing the knowledge production function in the spirit of Jones (J Polit Econ 103:759–784, 1995), they find that both agglomeration and entrepreneurship exhibit a statistically significantly positive effect on technological change. This comment mainly argues that this investigation only focuses on the growth rates but leaves out the effects induced by agglomeration and entrepreneurship on the level of knowledge. This might lead to biased estimates.     

Do I Hear the Whistle…? A First Attempt to Measure Four Forms of Employee Silence and Their Correlates

Silence in organizations refers to a state in which employees refrain from calling attention to issues at work such as illegal or immoral practices or developments that violate personal, moral, or legal standards. While Morrison and Milliken (Acad Manag Rev 25:706–725, 2000) discussed how organizational silence as a top-down organizational level phenomenon can cause employees to remain silent, a bottom-up perspective—that is, how employee motives contribute to the occurrence and maintenance of silence in organizations—has not yet been given much research attention. In this paper, we argue that this perspective is a meaningful complementation of the existing literature and that it is sensible to conceptualize distinct forms of employee silence (Pinder and Harlos, Research in personnel and human resources management. JAI Press, Greenwich, 2001; van Dyne et al., J Manag Stud 40:1359–1392, 2003). Drawing on past research and theory we conceptualize four forms of employee silence, namely quiescent, acquiescent, prosocial, and opportunistic silence. We present scales to assess the four forms and provide empirical tests for their distinctiveness and patterns of relationships to various correlates and potential antecedents and consequences.