The regulation of virtue: Cross-currents in professional ethics

This paper argues that more attention should be paid to the civic functions of ethical discourse about the professions and to the moral virtues inherent in their practice and traditions. The ability of professional ethics to articulate civic ideals and virtues is discussed in relation to three issues. First, should professional ethics aim to enlighten ethical understanding or to motivate ethical conduct? Second, how should professional ethics define the professional's moral responsibilities in the face of ethical dilemmas — should the professional attempt to resolve the dilemma ethically or to change the social conditions that create the dilemma in the first place? The third issue discussed in the paper is whether professional ethics should be based on the model of regulation and rational self-interest or on the model of virtue and a fundamental personal commitment to the ideal of a certain form of life? In order for work in professional ethics to attain intellectual credibility among a non-philosophical audience, it must develop a coherent and convincing position on each of these issues.     

Customer Service in UK call centres: : organisational perspectives and employee perceptions

The 1990s have witnessed a dramatic rise in consumer demand for, and hence provision of, call centres in the UK. Central to the success of call centres is customer service. Although there exists an ever-expanding tranche of literature on call centres and customer service, it primarily focuses on aspects of their functionality. In contrast, this article encompasses analysis of organisational perspectives and employee perceptions in its review of the contemporary nature of customer service in UK call centres. Drawing from recent, exploratory research, the article asserts that, in general, there is significant potential for improving customer service and satisfaction through the medium of more sophisticated employee management practices.     

Managing ethics in higher education: implementing a code or embedding virtue?

This paper reviews a publication entitled 'Ethics Matters. Managing Ethical Issues in Higher Education', which was distributed to all UK universities and equivalent (HEIs) in October 2005. The publication proposed that HEIs should put in place an institution-wide ethical policy framework, well beyond the customary focus on research ethics, together with the mechanisms necessary to ensure its implementation. Having summarised the processes that led to the publication and the publication itself, the paper then considers whether following the now commonplace corporate practice of implementing a code of ethics is appropriate for such institutions. Drawing on both the empirical evidence in relation to codes in the business ethics literature and a consideration of the nature of the university as an institution, the paper offers an alternative suggestion for how ethical issues in higher education might be managed.     

Putting ethics and economic rationality together: an Aristotelian and philosophical approach

The gap between economic rationality, as embedded in utility maximization, and ethical rationality, identified with a set of rules that prescribe the right course of action, has been a challenging issue for economists, philosophers, and business ethicists. Despite the difference and the noncompetition between a scientific economic approach of economics and business ethics, and a behavioral and philosophical one, we highlight the importance of the Aristotelian concept of prudence or phronesis applied to business activity. Phronesis allows for a conceptualization of rationality that can be simultaneously applied to economics and ethics. It also allows conceiving the intrinsically ethical nature of economic rationality. This relationship requires an appropriate education and the intervention of the state.     

The glory of stories: Using critical incidents to understand service evaluation in the primary healthcare context

This paper reports the results of a research project into the determinants of consumer evaluation of services. The research uses the healthcare context to explore consumer perceptions of the service product dimensions. Using a critical incident technique, a consumer‐derived model of the relationships between core and peripheral aspects of the service is presented. The results indicate that evaluation is a function of both personal and organizational factors which comprise core and peripheral components of the service.     

A quantitative analysis of authors,schools and themes in virtue ethics articles in business ethics and management journals (1980–2011)

Virtue ethics is generally recognized as one of the three major schools of ethics, but is often waylaid by utilitarianism and deontology in business and management literature. EBSCO and ABI databases were used to look for articles in the Journal of Citation Reports publications between 1980 and 2011 containing the keywords ‘virtue ethics’, ‘virtue theory’, or ‘virtuousness’ in the abstract and ‘business’ or ‘management’ in the text. The search was refined to draw lists of the most prolific authors, the most cited authors, the most cited articles, and the journals with the most virtue ethics publications. This information allows one to chart how virtue ethics articles have evolved through the decades and to establish ‘schools’ or clusters of authors as well as clusters of themes. The results of this quantitative analysis of authors, ‘schools’, themes, and publications provide a foundation for the future study of virtue ethics in business and management, identifying its achievements and potentials.     

Strategic and organisational determinants of sophistication in deployed sales force automation systems within three industry sectors in the UK

Abstract

This paper investigates strategic and organisational context determinants of the sophistication of adopted sales force automation (SFA) systems in three UK industries: financial services, pharmaceuticals, and building/construction. Sophistication of adopted systems is associated with the organisation placing greater emphasis on information orientation, which is itself driven by an increased integration of IT and sales coupled with increased organisational slack. Increased integration of IT and sales is itself driven by increased strategic importance of sales coupled with increased use of internal communication networks. Importantly, a firm's marketing orientation, although also driven by the strategic importance of sales, has no impact on either information orientation or SFA sophistication. We discuss the implications of our findings to aid understanding of SFA implementation failure.     

Most cited business ethics publications: mapping the intellectual structure of business ethics studies in 2001–2008

This study explores the research paradigms of contemporary business ethics research in 2001–2008. With citation data from the top two business ethics journals included in the Social Sciences Citation Index, this study conducts citation and co‐citation analysis to identify the most important publications, scholars, and research themes in the business ethics area and then maps the intellectual structure of business ethics studies between 2001 and 2008. The results show that current business ethics studies cluster around four major research themes, including morality and social contract theory, ethical decision making, corporate social responsibility, and stakeholder theory. This study helps profile the invisible network of knowledge production in business ethics and provides important insights on current research paradigms of business ethics studies.     

Paperless healthcare: Progress and challenges of an IT-enabled healthcare system

For most Americans, a trip to the doctor's office or a hospital stay necessitates that medical personnel search through paper charts and records as care is administered. This remains the status quo, despite the increasingly large role that electronic communication plays in other aspects of our business and personal lives. The elevated use of information technology (IT) in healthcare settings—primarily via utilization of electronic health records (EHRs), which allow information to be readily communicated and shared among healthcare providers—has been advocated as a means of improving quality of care and helping to control healthcare costs over the long term. Yet, hastened implementation of healthcare IT will require considerable cost incursion in the near term, and will present various other challenges that must be addressed. Herein, we examine the merits and benefits of healthcare IT, as well as the costs and other challenges that may serve as obstacles to its wider implementation and use. We conclude with a set of recommendations designed to increase the likelihood that extensive expansion in the use of healthcare IT will yield the desired benefits.     

Conflicting Views of Markets and Economic Justice: Implications for Student Learning

This paper describes a flaw in the teaching of issues related to market economics and social justice at American institutions of higher learning. The flaw we speak of is really a gap, or an educational disconnect, which exists between those faculty who support market-based economies and those who believe capitalism promotes economic injustice. The thesis of this paper is that the gap is so wide and the ideas that are promoted are so disconnected that students are trapped into choosing one or the other position (or neither) and are left unable to link the two sides of the discussion. Such an educational process is not one that produces free and reasoned discernment. In this paper, we briefly relate how we came to be aware of the disconnect and its harms. We present evidence that a pedagogical gulf exists within the teaching of markets and capitalism at American universities – faculty interviews, course syllabi, portions of the corpus of material generally referred to as Catholic Social Thought, as well as references to traditional, mainstream economic theory. Further, we give evidence of the confusion and frustration among students this gulf causes. We suggest possible reasons for the gulf–primarily through an investigation of the differences in underlying assumptions and misperceptions that exist between two divisions within universities. We conclude by suggesting a set of curricular changes designed to improve teaching. The authors’ aim is not to change people’s minds. It is to change their teaching. The authors believe that these curricular changes will leave students less frustrated and better prepared for a life of significant service – with improved critical thinking skills.David F. Carrithers is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Finance in the Albers School of Business & Economics at Seattle University. He has taught at Seattle University since 1985, in the areas of corporate and entrepreneurial finance. Mr. Carrithers earned an MBA from the University of Washington in 1984. Dean Peterson is assistant professor of economics at Seattle University. His research interests focus on the history of economic thought. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Illinois in 1994.     

Longitudinal measurement in organisational transformation: a case of a Dutch Flex Company

This paper will present the analysis of data over 3 years (1998, 1999, and 2000) on the satisfaction of flex workers in the context of a flex company’s service excellence programme, as an example of the use of measurements in relation to the change process. The important issues related to the specific data of the flex workers’ satisfaction surveys are: (a) the relationships between perceived satisfaction of flex workers and possible behavioural consequences, like making complaints and making use of other flex companies; (b) the stability of factor constructs over time that identify the major dimensions of satisfaction of flex workers; and (c) the satisfaction dynamics over time.     

The evolving role of organisational and personal networks in international market venturing

In a study of 1304 Australian manufacturing industry SMEs, we investigate the relationships among networking (i.e., inter-personal and inter-organisational networks), international market venturing (i.e., export intensity), and family ownership. We find evidence that (1) inter-personal networking and inter-organisational networking positively influence SME international market venturing, but this relationship is contingent on a time lag effect, and (2) family ownership negatively moderates the effect of inter-organisational networking on international market venturing. Implications for managerial practice and public policy are discussed.     

Understanding Conflicting Interests of a Government and a Tobacco Manufacturer: A Game-Theoretic Approach

Rice is the staple food of nearly half of the population of the world, most of whom live in developing countries. Ensuring a domestic supply of rice from outside sources is difficult for developing countries as less than 5% of the total world’s production is available for international trade. Hence, in order to ensure domestic food security, e.g., food availability and access, governments provide subsidies in agriculture. In many occasions, public money used for the subsidy goes toward promoting undesirable crops like tobacco. Although the strategic interaction between governments and manufacturers is critical, it has not been studied in the literature. This study fills this gap by considering a game between a government (of a developing country) and a tobacco manufacturer in which the government decides on a mix of subsidies and the tobacco manufacturer decides on declaring a purchasing price of tobacco. We provide a numerical study to show that controlling the output harvest price is more effective in reaching the desired end result for both the government and the tobacco manufacturer. A subsidy in fertilizer results in the measurable increase in the government spending but does not have significant effect in reaching the production target. The fertilizer subsidy should be provided only when the output price is too high to be affordable for the population.     

The Ethical and Economic Implications of Smoking in Enclosed Public Facilities: A Resolution of Conflicting Rights

Smokers and nonsmokers possess equal rights but those rights conflict with each other in the use of shared facilities. Medical research has established that smoking harms not only those who use the product but also those who are passively exposed to it. Laws and private regulation of smoking in shared facilities have resulted in the segregation of smokers from nonsmokers to an outright ban of tobacco use. Such controls have provided unsatisfactory results to both groups. An acceptable ethical solution, based on reduction of harm and compensation, can be derived by applying Moral Audit principles, supported by economic analysis, which does not unduly curtail the rights of both parties as to the use of tobacco products.     

The teaching of ethics in management accounting: progress and prospects

Recent research has shown that, although still on a limited scale, the teaching of business ethics in UK higher education has been increasing in recent years. This paper reports on a postal questionnaire survey conducted to investigate the extent to which ethical issues are covered in the teaching of management accounting in higher education. The principal findings are that the majority of management accounting lecturers in the British Isles do not incorporate ethics. About a third of the respondents to the survey do address ethical issues, although about half of those say they do so only implicitly. Various factors underlying the findings and prospects for the future are discussed.