The Impact of Ethical Ideologies,Moral Intensity,and Social Context on Sales-Based Ethical Reasoning

Previous research indicates that ethical ideologies, issue-contingencies, and social context can impact ethical reasoning in different business situations. However, the manner in which these constructs work together to shape different steps of the ethical decision-making process is not always clear. The purpose of this study was to address these issues by exploring the influence of idealism and relativism, perceived moral intensity in a decision-making situation, and social context on the recognition of an ethical issue and ethical intention. Utilizing a sales-based scenario and multiple ethics measures included on a self-report questionnaire, data were collected from a regional sample of business students, most of whom had modest work experience. The results indicated that perceived moral intensity was associated with increased ethical issue recognition and ethical intention. Idealism was also associated with increased ethical issue recognition, and relativism was associated with decreased ethical intention. Social consensus was positively related to ethical issue recognition and intention, while competitive context was inversely related to ethical intention. Finally, ethical issue recognition was associated with increased ethical intention. Idealism, moral intensity, social consensus, and work experience worked together as predictors of ethical issue recognition, whereas recognition of an ethical issue, relativism, moral intensity, social consensus, and competitive context worked together to predict ethical intention.     

Ethical Leadership Evaluations After Moral Transgression: Social Distance Makes the Difference

In light of continuing corporate scandals, the study of ethical leadership remains an important area of research which helps to understand the antecedents and consequences of ethical behavior in organizations. The present study investigates how social distance influences ethical leadership evaluations, and how in turn ethical leadership evaluations affect leader–member exchange (LMX) after a leader’s moral transgression. Based on construal level theory, we propose that higher social distance will lead to more severe evaluations of immoral behavior and therefore entail lower ethical leadership ratings. More- over, we hypothesize that ethical leadership will positively affect LMX. Participants read a scenario describing a moral situation in which a leader, who was presented in either high or low social distance, behaves unethically toward an employee. We tested our predictions using a structural equation modeling approach. As expected, participants in the high social distance condition judged leaders more harshly (i.e., they gave lower ethical leadership ratings) than in the low social distance condition. Thus, social distance moderated the extent to which leaders are perceived as ethical leaders after moral transgression. Moreover, in accordance with our proposition, ethical leadership ratings had a positive influence on LMX.     

伦理型领导与伦理问题报告：一个多层次模型

基于社会学习理论及社会信息加工视角,文章探讨了伦理型领导激发员工报告组织内部伦理问题的多层次作用机制。文章采用两阶段问卷调查方式收集67名团队领导与302名员工调查样本,运用多层线性模型进行假设检验,结果表明,个体导向的伦理型领导对员工伦理问题报告具有显著正向影响,道德勇气在二者之间起部分中介作用。同时,团队导向的伦理型领导显著正向影响员工伦理问题报告,伦理氛围在二者之间起完全中介作用。此外,在伦理氛围更强的团队,个体导向的伦理型领导对伦理问题报告的作用更强。研究结果揭示了伦理型领导影响员工伦理问题报告的多层次作用路径及边界条件,对于加强组织的伦理管理具有重要的现实意义。     

Ethical Rule Breaking by Employees: A Test of Social Bonding Theory

As employees continue to lie, cheat, and steal from their employers, researchers have tried to help managers understand and possibly predict such deviant behavior. This study considers the specific employee misconduct of ethical rule breaking. Hirschi (1969) suggested that deviant behavior can be better understood by social bonding theory. The social bonding model includes four elements; attachment, commitment, involvement, and belief. It is proposed that Hirschi's social bonding theory can be used to understand ethical rule breaking by employees. Using a sample of 200 employees, the results indicate that the social bonding elements of attachment and involvement can be used to better understand the reported likelihood of ethical rule breaking of employees. Recommendations for better applying the social bonding model to ethical rule breaking are suggested.     

Ethical Complexity of Social Change: Negotiated Actions of a Social Enterprise

Journal of Business Ethics - This paper investigates how social enterprises navigate through the ethical complexity of social change and extends the ethical quandaries faced by social enterprises...     

Business Ethics in the South and South East Asia

Gender is one of the most frequently studied variables within the ethics literature. In prior studies that find gender differences, females consistently report more ethical responses than males. However, prior research also indicates that females are more prone to responding in a socially desirable fashion. Consequently, it is uncertain whether gender differences in ethical decision-making exist because females are more ethical or perhaps because females are more prone to the social desirability response bias. Using a sample of 30 scenarios from prior studies that find gender differences, we examine whether these gender differences remain robust once social desirability is controlled for in the analysis. Our data suggest that the effect of gender on ethical decision-making is largely attenuated once social desirability is included in the analysis. In essence, the social desirability response bias appears to be driving a significant portion of the relationship between gender and ethical decision-making. We discuss several important research implications of this study.     

Institutional work to navigate ethical dilemmas: Evidence from a social enterprise

Social entrepreneurs encounter ethical dilemmas while addressing their social and commercial missions. The literature has implicitly acknowledged the ethical dilemmas social entrepreneurs face; however, the nature and implications of these ethical dilemmas and how social entrepreneurs navigate them are underexplored and undertheorized. We address this by conducting a 36-month field study of a social enterprise operating in a rural resource-constrained environment in India and dealing with a stigmatized product. We found four categories of ethical dilemmas faced by social entrepreneurs: challenges in engaging the community (equality vs. efficiency and fairness vs. care), challenges related to spillover effects (right vs. responsibilities), challenges in balancing diverse stakeholders (emotionally detached vs. emotionally engaged), and challenges related to cross-subsidization efforts (utilitarianism vs. fairness). Further, we identified three types of institutional work social entrepreneurs engage in to address ethical dilemmas: recognition work, responsibilization work, and reflective judgment work. We label these three institutional works as inclusion work - purposive actions of an entity to address ethical dilemmas by implementing its program in a way that supports the most marginalized. Our study makes an important contribution to the literature on ethics in the context of social entrepreneurship by identifying specific ethical dilemmas social entrepreneurs face in managing hybridity (balancing social-commercial objectives) and enhancing social impact (managing social-social objectives). Moreover, through the concept of inclusion work, our research not only integrates insights from ethics and institutional theories but also responds to the recent call to address grand societal challenges through institutional work.     

Articulating the Meanings of Collective Experiences of Ethical Consumption

In the context of the growing popularity of the ethical consumer movement and the appearance of different types of ethical collective communities, the current article explores the meanings drawn from the participation in Responsible Consumption Cooperatives. In existing research, the overriding focus has been on examining individual ethical consumer behaviour at the expense of advancing our understanding of how ethical consumers behave collectively. Hence, this article examines the meanings derived from participating in ethical consumer groups. A qualitative multi-method approach is adopted to increase the validity of findings. This includes focus groups, in-depth interviews, observation and document analysis. Results show that ethical consumption in a group project offers a greater sense of effectiveness and control when compared to individual actions. Furthermore, these groups facilitate the creation of a social circle and encourage new learning as a result of the social interaction that takes place in the ethical community of the cooperative.     

Creating an Ethical Work Context: A Pathway to Generate Social Capital in the Firm

There is a need for further research to understand how social capital in the workplace can be promoted. This article studies the generation of social capital from a comprehensive perspective that integrates ethics and general management. We propose the concept of “ethical work context” as an influential antecedent of the social capital in the firm. The ethical work context, which is aligned with the “humanizing culture” approach proposed by Melé (Journal of Business Ethics 45(1), 3–14, 2003a), allows a broader comprehension of the concrete management practices and organizational dynamics that generate organizational social capital. It is argued that social capital, understood as a by-product of the ethical work context, results both from organizational design and ongoing managerial activity. Creating an ethical work context brings ethics and social capital into the realm of the general manager; a figure that has remained absent from the social capital literature.     

Ethical Leadership: Assessing the Value of a Multifoci Social Exchange Perspective

In this study, we comprehensively examine the relationships between ethical leadership, social exchange, and employee commitment. We find that organizational and supervisory ethical leadership are positively related to employee commitment to the organization and supervisor, respectively. We also find that different types of social exchange relationships mediate these relationships. Our results suggest that the application of a multifoci social exchange perspective to the context of ethical leadership is indeed useful: As hypothesized, within-foci effects (e.g., the relationship between organizational ethical leadership and commitment to the organization) are stronger than cross-foci effects (e.g., the relationship between supervisory ethical leadership and commitment to the organization). In addition, in contrast to the “trickle down” model of ethical leadership (Mayer et al. in Org Behav Hum Decis Process 108:1–13, 2009), our results suggest that organizational ethical leadership is both directly and indirectly related to employee outcomes.     

Does ethical leadership enhance group learning behavior? Examining the mediating influence of group ethical conduct,justice climate,and peer justice

The link between ethical leadership and employees' ethical behaviors is well established, but are ethical leadership's benefits confined to ethical behaviors? This study aimed to address this question by examining the extent to which ethical leaders create an environment conducive to cultivating a broader set of desirable behaviors such as group learning behavior. We drew upon and integrated insights from social learning theory and the social marketplace model to develop and test a model that illuminates how ethical leadership enhances group learning behavior. We propose that group ethical conduct, justice climate, and peer justice are three contextual mechanisms through which ethical leadership improves group learning. Using data collected over two time periods from 95 supervisors and 323 work group members from a large financial institution in the United States, we found that ethical leadership significantly relates to group learning behavior, and that this relationship is partially explained by group ethical conduct and peer justice, but not justice climate. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.     

The "Ethics" of Ethical Investing

There appears to be an implicit assumption by those connected with the ethical investment movement (e.g., ethical investment firms, individual investors, social investment organizations, academia, and the media), that ethical investment is in fact ethical. This paper will attempt to challenge the notion that the ethical mutual fund industry, as currently taking place, is acting in an ethical manner. Ethical issues such as the transparency of the funds and advertising are discussed. Ethical mutual fund screens such as tobacco, alcohol, gambling, and the military are preliminarily examined to better determine whether they can actually be defined as "ethical" screens as opposed to merely social, political, or religious screens. A code of ethics for ethical investment is constructed by which ethical mutual fund firms can be audited for ethical compliance.     

Professional Ethical Standards,Corporate Social Responsibility,and the Perceived Role of Ethics and Social Responsibility

This study explored several proposed relationships among professional ethical standards, corporate social responsibility, and the perceived role of ethics and social responsibility. Data were collected from 313 business managers registered with a large professional research association with a mailed self-report questionnaire. Mediated regression analysis indicated that perceptions of corporate social responsibility partially mediated the positive relationship between perceived professional ethical standards and the believed importance of ethics and social responsibility. Perceptions of corporate social responsibility also fully mediated the negative relationship between perceived professional ethical standards and the subordination of ethics and social responsibility. The results suggested that professions should develop ethical standards to encourage social responsibility, since these actions are associated with enhanced employee ethical attitudes. Sean Valentine (D.B.A., Louisiana Tech University) is an Associate Professor of Management in the College of Business at the University of Wyoming. His research interests include ethical decision making, organizational culture, and job attitudes. His research has appeared in journals such as Human Relations, Behavioral Research in Accounting, Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, and Journal of Business Research. Gary Fleischman (Ph.D., Texas Tech University) is an Associate Professor of Accounting and the McGee Hearne and Paiz Faculty Scholar in Accounting at the University of Wyoming. His teaching expertise is in accounting and entrepreneurship, and his research interests are in business ethics and behavioral business research. He has published in journals such as Behavioral Research in Accounting, The International Journal of Accounting, and Journal of Business Ethics.     

Examining the Boundaries of Ethical Leadership: The Harmful Effect of Co-worker Social Undermining on Disengagement and Employee Attitudes

In recent years, scholars have sought to investigate the impact that ethical leaders can have within organisations. Yet, only a few theoretical perspectives have been adopted to explain how ethical leaders influence subordinate outcomes. This study therefore draws on social rules theory (SRT) to extend our understanding of the mechanisms linking ethical leadership to employee attitudes. We argue that ethical leaders reduce disengagement, which in turn promotes higher levels of job satisfaction and organisational commitment, as well as lower turnover intentions. Co-worker social undermining is examined as a moderator of the relationship between ethical leadership and disengagement, as we suggest that it is difficult for ethical leaders to be effective when co-worker undermining prevails. To test the proposed model, questionnaires were administered to 460 nurses in Romanian hospital settings over three time points separated by two-week intervals and the hypotheses were tested using generalised multilevel structural equation modeling (GSEM) with STATA. The findings revealed that ethical leadership has a beneficial effect on employee attitudes by reducing disengagement. However, the relationship between ethical leadership and disengagement was moderated by co-worker social undermining, such that when undermining was higher, the significance of the mediated relationships disappeared. These results suggest that while ethical leaders can promote positive employee attitudes, their effectiveness is reduced in situations where co-worker undermining exists.

     

On Ethical, Social and Environmental Management Systems

There are three types of solutions to the problems deriving from companies' ethical, social and environmental responsibilities: those based on regulation by an authority or agency; those deigned to create market incentives; and those that rely on self-regulation by companies themselves. In the specific field we are concerned with here, regulation has significant costs and drawbacks that make it particularly desirable that companies should set up their own ethical, social and environmental management systems or programmes. The purpose of this article is twofold. On the one hand, it explains how implementing voluntary ethical, social and environmental management systems or programmes may help to develop and sustain ethical behaviour in organizations, overcoming the conflict between compulsory regulation and occasional ethical practices. On the other hand, it shows that conditions must be met for an ethical management programme to be effective.     

The Ethical Frameworks of Social Media Policies Among U.S. Nonprofit Organizations: Legal Expectations,Dialogic Prescriptions,and a Dialectical Model

Nonprofit organizations are experiencing a new world of fundraising, marketing, and stakeholder engagement on a scale previously unseen and due largely to social media. This study investigated the extent to which nonprofits craft social media policies using ethical frameworks to guide online activity mindful of this new reality. Assessing the top 100 U.S. nonprofits and their social media policies, this study examined the 80,000 words of text extant within the available 55 nonprofit social media policies and found emergent themes that articulate the current ethical state of nonprofit social media policies. Hand-coding processes yielded themes of engagement, responsibility, privacy, protection, transparency, and respect. Computer-coding additionally aggregated these themes into larger themes of privacy, sharing, communication, accuracy, inaccuracy, engagement, and dialogue. Further analysis explored the ways in which nonprofit social media policies imply a dialectical model of ethical frameworks between legal and dialogic dimensions.     

The ethics of impression management

There are differences among forms of impression management that are relevant to its ethical evaluation. Sometimes, moral appraisal is to do with impression management as a tactic of influence, but not about deception. In other cases, an audience is given a true or a false impression, and ethical questions of deception arise, but they are made more complex by the need to consider the responsibility of an audience in reaching its conclusions. Cases where that is an issue blend into a third category in which impression management is joint social performance. Such cases raise additional possibilities of the problematic influence of one agent by another, but also begin to move ethical concerns from the behaviour of an individual agent to the social practices that sustain their expectations. Such social practices invite ethical appraisal because they may impose constraints. But they may also provide opportunities for achievement and pursuit of excellence.     

Ethics and entrepreneurs: An international comparative study

In this study, we develop a conceptual framework for the examination of cross-cultural differences in ethical attitudes of business people based on the assumptions of integrative social contract theory (ISCT). ISCT reveals the relevant cultural and economic norms that are predictive of the level of the ethical attitudes among societies and at the same time points out the more subtle impact of social institutions on ethical attitudes of different groups within a society. The evidence supports the use of integrative theoretical approaches within the field of business ethics.     

Approaching virtuousness through organizational ethical quality: toward a moral corporate social responsibility

Today, in both theory and practice, the concepts of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and ethics are not necessarily related. Organizations can demonstrate high levels of social proactivity in their CSR policies with or without having laudable levels of ethical quality or virtuousness. This article introduces the concepts of organizational ethical quality (OEQ) to evaluate the moral excellence of CSR actions and policies, identifying and categorizing varying levels ranging from the absence of ethical virtuousness, termed immoral CSR (ICSR), to high levels of moral CSR (MCSR), or ethical virtuousness. High MCSR is the product of both high levels of OEQ in conjunction with more proactive CSR policies based on social action.     

物流快递公司社会责任研究

物流快递公司社会责任包括法律责任、经济责任和道德责任。公司是以营利为目的的法人,其存在的根本目的是最大可能地创造社会财富,因此经济责任是第一位的社会责任;公司营利必须遵守国家法律,因此公司应当承担法律责任;公司承担道德责任在本质上是社会发展的需要,也是公司自身利益的需要,在根本上两者是一致的。