The Decomposition of the Corporate Body: What Kant Cannot Contribute to Business Ethics

Kant is gaining popularity in business ethics because the categorical imperative rules out actions such as deceptive advertising and exploitative working conditions, both of which treat people merely as means to an end. However, those who apply Kant in this way often hold businesses themselves morally accountable, and this conception of collective responsibility contradicts the kind of moral agency that underlies Kant’s ethics. A business has neither inclinations nor the capacity to reason, so it lacks the conditions necessary for constraint by the moral law. Instead, corporate policies ought to be understood as analogous to legal constraints. They may encourage or discourage certain actions, but they cannot determine a person’s maxim – which for Kant is the focus of moral judgment. Because there is no collective intention apart from any intentions of the individual agents who act as members of the corporation, an organization itself has no moral obligations. This poses a dilemma: either apply the categorical imperative to the actions of particular businesspeople and surrender the notion of collective responsibility, or apply a different moral theory to the actions of businesses themselves. Given the diffusion of responsibility in a bureaucracy, the explanatory usefulness of collective responsibility may force business ethicists to abandon Kant’s moral philosophy.     

The relationship between multinationality and performance: Knowledge-intensive vs. capital-intensive service micro-multinational enterprises

This research explores the relationship between multinationality and firm performance (M-P) in the context of micro-multinational enterprises (mMNEs) within the service sector. We examine the moderating effects of industry characteristics using a data set of 1082 Spanish service mMNEs over an eight-year period. The empirical results provide statistical evidence that knowledge-intensive service mMNEs exhibit an inverted U-shaped M-P relationship, while capital-intensive service mMNEs present a U-shaped relationship. Our findings demonstrate that knowledge-intensive service mMNEs increase their performance in the initial stage of multinationality, encounter a threshold of internationalization at relatively low levels of multinationality and have a propensity to over-internationalize. By comparison, capital-intensive service mMNEs experience negative performance effects at low levels of multinationality and positive ones as they further internationalize. Given that their operations are scale-sensitive, they tend to expand internationally by concentrating their operations in few foreign markets as a means to overcome the liabilities of internationalization and smallness. We contribute to the literatures on multinationality research in the service sector and on SME internationalization by showing that the effects of multinationality on the performance of mMNEs depend on industry characteristics and that such contextual factors provide a better understanding of the M-P relationship.     

How do successful scholars get their best research ideas? An exploration

We interview 24 marketing professors to ask how they got the ideas for 64 of their papers. More than three-quarters of the papers were inspired by holes in the literature, by a “stylized fact” that the current literature cannot explain, or by an interaction with a manager. The rest fall into several smaller categories that to a large extent can be seen as special cases of the three big ones. We describe how papers from each of the three big categories help move the literature forward. We also illustrate the range of situations contained in each category by way of several examples. Among the authors we interview, most do not use a single source. As these authors become more senior, managerial contacts play an increasing role, while the balance between literature and stylized facts appears to be unchanged.

     

The Roles of Credibility and Social Consciousness in the Corporate Philanthropy-Consumer Behavior Relationship

We have empirically examined the relationship between top executives’ turnover and the corporate environmental responsibility by identifying the influence of ten specific turnover reasons resulting in the chairman’s departure and two important types of chairman’s succession. Using a sample of 782 manufacturing listed companies across 3 years in China, we find that the corporate environmental responsibility is negatively associated with the involuntary and negative turnover (i.e., dismissal, health and death, and forced resignation) and positively associated with improving corporate governance, and not associated with the normal turnover (i.e., retirement and contract expiration) and the types of chairman’s succession (i.e., independence, and internal or external promotion). Our study significantly contributes to research in environmental disclosure by revealing the relationship between chairman’s turnover and the corporate environmental responsibility. A feasible way is suggested to regulators and other stakeholders in monitoring or assessing the possible abnormality of environmental responsibility when firms experience involuntary and negative chairman’s turnover in the emerging economies.     

Different Paths to Collaboration Between Businesses and Civil Society and the Role of Third Parties

In this article, we suggest that one of the unexplored paths toward collaboration between firms and civil society organizations starts with confrontation or potential conflict, and that the transition toward collaboration can be further understood if one focuses on triadic relationships rather than dyadic ones. We analyze the presence of third parties and their different roles to explain how collaboration is facilitated. The article aims at bringing together the bodies of research on business–civil society confrontation and on business–civil society collaboration. It offers a comparative analysis of four case studies, and proposes a typology of third parties composed of facilitating allies, participating allies, mediators, and solution seekers. We conclude with some implications for further research as well as for practice.     

Selling to the urban Chinese in East Asia: Do CSR and value orientation matter?

Most multinationals have a presence in the East Asian region and target the urban Chinese population. In an effort to win over the loyalty of consumers, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been used increasingly as a marketing strategy. This paper explores how personal values influence the attitude and behavior towards CSR among Chinese consumers. By collecting data from three major East Asian cities — Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore, and employing factor, cluster, conjoint and correspondence analyses, the authors demonstrate that Confucian value orientation can be a powerful antecedent of CSR support.     

Public-Sector Accounting and E-Governance in Developing Countries: Case of Sri Lanka

This article analyzes how new public financial management system should address the efficiency and effectiveness of the public sector and the emerging accrual basis accounting with e-governance for greater e-transparency on public-sector accounting in Sri Lanka. Despite the setting up of e-framework in 1983, the Sri Lankan public-sector accountancy environment during the last two decades raises concerns about efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability of the e-framework. The findings provide evidence of the importance of the economy and efficiency in the usage of public funds to provide more convenient access to government accounting information for citizens in Sri Lanka.     

Branded lives: The production and consumption of meaning at work

Over the last number of decades, as a result of regulatory, technological and changing consumer dynamics, many service organisations operate in an increasingly competitive and dynamic external environment. These changes have led to service companies trying to both recruit and retain profitable customers. In order to compete effectively, do companies focus on transaction and relationship marketing activities only or on the balanced delivery of both? Apart from a small body of work (Brodie et al. 1997; Coviello et al. 1997; 2002), the literature has treated transaction and relationship marketing in an isolated and non-integrated fashion. In particular there has been limited consideration of the pertinent issues facing service organisations trying to integrate these two perspectives in practice. This article describes an in-depth study of a service organisation's transaction and relationship marketing activities. In this study theory was used in the development of a conceptual model. This model was used as a framework to guide the study and data collection using one retail bank case. The data were analysed in relation to the transaction and relationship marketing focus and activities of the bank. The findings indicate that resource investment in some aspects of transaction and relationship marketing activities, in practice, was unbalanced compared to the resource investment in a wide range of support activities. The study has implications for research and theory and to those attempting to deliver both transaction and relationship marketing in the context of dynamic and competitive environments.     

The influence of colour on visual search times in cluttered environments

Fifty subjects participated in a series of visual search tasks where the aim was to explore the influence of colour on visual search times for targets situated in a series of cluttered distractor fields. The results supported previous findings regarding the effect of colour and showed that, even in cluttered environments, certain hues helped in the reduction of search times. The findings also indicated that there were interaction effects between the colour and positioning of the targets in the distractor fields.