A New Scale to Measure Executive Servant Leadership: Development,Analysis, and Implications for Research

This article introduces a new scale to measure executive servant leadership, situating the need for this scale within the context of ethical leadership and its impacts on followers, organizations and the greater society. The literature on servant leadership is reviewed and servant leadership is compared to other concepts that share dimensions of ethical leadership (e.g., transformational, authentic, and spiritual leadership). Next, the Executive Servant Leadership Scale (ESLS) is introduced, and its contributions and limitations discussed. We conclude with an agenda for future research, describing ways the measure can be used to test hypotheses about organizational moral climate, ethical organizational culture, corporate responsibility, and institutional theory.     

E-Commerce, Ethical Commerce?

In this paper, we look at the new frontier of e-commerce, the ethical challenges it is facing and discuss some of the problems encountered and some of the solutions that are evolving. The areas of concern include the impact on other businesses, investors and consumers. Problems regarding financial reporting, intellectual property and privacy are discussed.     

Product Quality and the Criminal Law

When considering product quality, focus on the civil law as the means of obtaining consumer redress should not blind one to appreciation that the criminal law also has a useful role to play. Even in circumstances in which physical harm to the consumer has not occurred, economic detriment can be sufficient for the quality of a product to be questioned in the context of not only civil but also criminal proceedings. This article uses the example of English law to explore the rationales for regulation of product quality backed by criminal sanctions, and shows how there may be overlaps but also divergences in the scope of coverage of civil and criminal laws.     

Overseas assembly and country sourcing choices

This paper studies the cross-country pattern of U.S. overseas assembly activities between 1980 and 2000 to examine how outsourcing decisions are affected by changes in country and competitor costs. A number of interesting regularities emerge. When a country's costs rise, the share of U.S. overseas assembly activities in that location decline. Conversely, a country's share grows when competitor country costs increase. While own and competitor country costs affect overseas assembly in all countries, the magnitude of these effects is larger for developing countries. In many cases, the measured cost responses appear to correspond with outsourcing theories that are based on search and customization costs.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Is it ‘who I am’, ‘what I can get away with’, or ‘what you’ve done to me’</Emphasis>? A Multi-theory Examination of Employee Misconduct

Research on detrimental workplace behaviors has increased recently, predominantly focusing on justice issues. Research from the integrity testing literature, which is grounded in trait theory, has not received as much attention in the management literature. Trait theory, agency theory, and psychological contracts theory each have different predictions about employee performance that is harmful to the organization. While on the surface they appear contradictory, this paper describes how each can be integrated to increase our understanding of detrimental workplace behaviors.Deborah L. Kidder is an Associate Professor in the Department of Management at Towson University, in Towson, MD, USA. Her Ph.D. is in Industrial Relations from the University of Minnesta. Her research interests involve issues of trust and equity, perceptions of (un) fairness at work, and the consequences of (un)fair treatment for employees and organizations. She teaches courses in Human Resource Management, Organizational Behavior, Leadership, and Negotiation.     

The influence of organizational justice on accountant whistleblowing

In this research study, we apply the theory of organizational justice to the design of whistleblowing policies and procedures. As a pro-social behavior, we posit that employee whistleblowing is likely to increase when organizational whistleblowing procedures, outcomes, and related exchanges with superiors are perceived as fair. We test our hypotheses with an experiment involving 447 internal auditors and management accountants. Our results indicate that whistleblowing policies and mechanisms incorporating higher levels of procedural justice, distributive justice, and interactional justice were perceived to increase the likelihood that an organizational accountant would internally report financial statement fraud.     

Children as Economic Agents

A generational perspective recognizes that children have preferences which may differ systematically from those of adults, and, furthermore, that a children's standpoint should be recognized by scholars and activists and incorporated into policy targeted at children and their families. Economics has not considered children as agents because of their lack of power relative to adults. The implications of recognizing children's agency are explored for the case of children's paid and unpaid labor force and household work.     

Strategic human resource management and firm effectiveness in industries experiencing decline

Unstable economic conditions, in conjunction with other external and internal influences, have prompted attempts to understand the nature of organizational decline. While a number of issues have been carefully considered in recent theory and research, little effort has been made to consider the implications of human resource management practices for firms in declining industries. The present study examined human resource practices in three industries that experienced decline, and investigated the relationship of organizational performance with effective human resource management.