Social and environmental reporting and the corporate ego

This paper reports on the results of a qualitative exploration into the target audiences for social and environmental reporting (SER). In spite of the wealth of literature on SER motivations, relatively few studies have sought to ascertain who the key target or actual audiences are for SER. The results of this study, based on interviews with UK SER managers, suggest that investors and employees are overwhelmingly the most important audiences targeted by SER managers. The paper draws on auto‐communication theory to question the extent to which SER serves as a means of engaging in dialogue with stakeholders. It is argued that, beyond sending risk management signals to the financial markets, SER primarily serves as a vehicle whereby organizations can communicate with themselves. Moreover, broader stakeholders might be targeted with SER only insofar as doing so serves as a perceived endorsement of organizational communications, thereby embellishing the corporate ego's fantasy of how it would like to be perceived. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Do Violent Social Cause Advertisements Promote Social Change? An Examination of Implicit Associations

Violent content is used in social cause advertising campaigns as a means of discouraging antisocial attitudes and behaviors, despite the fact that findings regarding the effectiveness of including violence in advertisements are equivocal. The present research explores the efficacy of violent advertisements by investigating how such ads affect implicit associations with violent words/acts. The importance of implicit associations is that they can affect judgments and behaviors long after explicit memory for the advertisement has decayed. The findings of the research point to the prevalence of individual differences in response to violent ads. Specifically, social cause advertisements are effective in weakening implicit associations with violence for nonaggressive individuals, as would be desired. However, these campaigns strengthen implicit associations for aggressive individuals. Ameliorating their aggressive associations would be advantageous both to the individual and society; however, the results suggest such advertisements make matters worse. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Turning the other cheek: Facial orientation influences both model attractiveness and product evaluation

The layout of visual elements in advertising influences consumers' perception and judgments. The research reported here investigates the influence of the face orientation of a human model on the perception of their attractiveness and its downstream consequences on product evaluation. Across five experiments, we first demonstrate that consumers tend to perceive a model's face showing his or her left cheek as more attractive than when showing the right cheek, even when the images are otherwise identical. More importantly, we demonstrate the downstream influence of face orientation on the evaluation of advertised products whereby the leftward (vs. rightward) model's face increases the evaluation of the advertised product through perceived model attractiveness. We identify the underlying mechanism of the face orientation effect, namely, that consumers perceive those faces showing their left (vs. right) cheek as more prototypical, and that this perception of prototypicality elicits an aesthetic preference for the model's leftward face which in turn carries over to influence product evaluation. The theoretical and practical implications of this research are also discussed.     

America's Most Admired Companies Social Media Industry Divide

While public relations and marketing research has analyzed how companies are using individual social media channels, minimal research has explored an organization's social media presence across several channels or identified differences among industries. Using theoretical guidelines for best practices, this study does both by analyzing the complete list of Fortune's “America's Most Admired Companies” (N = 417) on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Results found there were differences across industries regarding their adoption and integration of best practices into their social media accounts. A list of 20 gold standard companies is provided.     

Redefining the Scholarship of Business Ethics: An Editorial

Traditionally, the term "scholarship" has been narrowly defined as discovery-based research. Teaching in higher education, by contrast, is perceived as an intellectually inferior activity. However, the teaching-research divide is a crude distinction which fails to capture the richness of scholarly endeavour in all disciplines. Drawing on Boyer's four forms of scholarship, it is argued that academic work in business ethics needs to be reconceptualised in terms which honour and value all contributions. This special issue of the Journal of Business Ethics, arising from an international conference on the teaching of business ethics, is illustrative of the scholarship of discovery, integration, application and teaching.     

Accounting for the dissolution of a nation state: Scotland and the Treaty of Union

Building upon the insights of socio-historical accounting research this paper attempts to show accounting’s centrality to major historical events. In this context, accounting is viewed as a technology which was employed in order to implement a particular political programme – the union of the Scottish and English parliaments in 1707. Accounting is presented as both a necessary and impossible technology in this context. Forging an economic compromise between Scottish and English Parliamentarians necessitated an economic calculation of the relative economic power of each country in the first instance, and some calculated reconciliation between the two in the second. However, such a calculation also proved to be impossible as competing political factions contested the figures, ostensibly on technical grounds, but substantively on an ideological basis. Furthermore, building upon the notion of impossibility, the paper shows that political programmes can sometimes be subservient to the technologies that they rely upon for their implementation. Faced with congenitally failing accounting practices the political programmes associated with union had to be modified into something that was deliverable through the constraints of the extant accountability.     

Settlement delays in the money market

We track 38,000 money market trades from execution to delivery and return, and provide a first empirical analysis of settlement delays in financial markets. In accord with the predictions of recent models of strategic settlement of financial claims, we document a tendency by lenders to delay delivery of loaned funds until the afternoon hours. We find banks to follow a simple strategy to manage the risk of account overdrafts, by delaying settlement of large payments relative to that of small payments. More sophisticated strategies such as increasing delays when own liquid balances are low and when dealing with small trading partners play a marginal role. We find evidence of strategic delay also when returning borrowed funds, although we can explain a smaller fraction of the dispersion in delays in the return than in delivery leg of money market lending.     

The Best Teacher I Ever Had Was ... Dorothy Hewitt

Teaching Business Ethics -     

Influences of visual attributes of food packaging on consumer preference and associations with taste and healthiness

Two experiments designed to investigate how the shape and colour of packaging, and product category, conjointly impact consumers’ product and packaging expectations are reported. In Experiment 1, the shape (rounded vs. angular) and visual appearance (greyscale, red‐to‐yellow and blue‐to‐green colour schemes) of the packaging were manipulated. Dependent measures were preference (willingness to purchase the product, how attention‐capturing the packaging is, and the pleasantness of the design) and any taste associations. In Experiment 2, shape (rounded vs. angular), colour (red‐to‐yellow vs. blue‐to‐green colour schemes), and product category (buttery vs. cereal cookies) were manipulated. In this case, the dependent measures were the perceived product healthiness and the preference of consumers. The results of Experiment 1 revealed that packaging colour influenced product preference. Red‐to‐yellow and blue‐to‐green colour schemes and angular packaging were preferred over greyscale and round packaging. Colour also influenced taste associations, while shape only influenced ratings of expected sweetness. In Experiment 2, packaging shape and product category influenced product preference. In particular, rounded packaging and the packaging of buttery cookies were preferred over angular packaging and the cereal cookies packaging. The healthiness of the product was rated higher for the rounded and red‐to‐yellow packaging containing a buttery product. Taken together, these results highlight the important role played by colour, shape, and category on the expectations and associations elicited by viewing product packaging.