Living (not learning) ethics

Much has been written recently about both the urgency and efficacy of teaching business ethics. The results of our survey of AACSB member schools confirm prior reports of similar surveys: The teaching of business ethics is indiscriminate, unorganized, and undisciplined in most North American schools of business. If universities are to be taken seriously in their efforts to create more ethical awareness and better moral decision-making skills among their graduates, they must provide a rigorous and well-developed system in which students can live ethics instead of merely learn ethics. A system must be devised to allow students to discover and refine their own values rather than simply learning ethical theories from an intellectual point of view.After reviewing the literature on business ethics in undergraduate curricula, we make a series of recommendations to deliver experiential ethical education for business students. The recommendations include student and faculty written codes of ethics, emphasis on ethical theory within the existing required legal environment course, applied ethics in the functional area capstones using alternative learning, a discussion of employee (and employer) rights and responsibilities during the curriculum capstone course, and a public service requirement for graduation. These recommendations may be implemented without substantive additional cost or programming requirements.Joseph Solberg is an Assistant Professor of Business Law at Illinois State University. His teaching and research interests are centered on the legal and ethical environments of business and the pedagogy of business ethics. He is a member of the American and Midwest Academies and Legal Studies in Business.Kelly Strong is an Assistant Professor of Management at Illinois State University. His teaching and research interests include business ethics, business and society, and strategic issues management. He has published articles in the Journal of Business Ethics and other scholarly outlets in the areas of ethics education, business and society, and ethical decision making.Charles McGuire, Jr. is Professor of Business Law and Chair of the Finance, Insurance and Law Department at Illinois State University. His interests are in the areas of business law and the legal environment of business as well as government regulation. He has published text-books and supplements on the legal environment of business in addition to scholarly works in the American Business Law Journal, among others.     

Developmental differences between distributed and face-to-face groups in electronically supported meeting environments: An exploratory investigation

This longitudinal pilot study compared the developmental patterns of groups in three types of electronically supported meeting modes: face-to-face, dispersed-synchronous, and dispersed-asynchronous. The modes differed primarily in interactivity, channel capacity, and synchronicity. Comparisons were made along several behavioral and socio-technical dimensions which influence the group development process. Face-to-face groups tended to exhibit more effective leadership and coordination competence over time as compared to the distributed groups. However, along several other group process dimensions such as cohesiveness and equality of participation, dispersed groups did not differ from their face-to-face counterparts. Moreover, groups in all three modes performed equally well in terms of the quality of outputs. These results suggest that electronically distributed work groups—with adequate time and training—can become cohesive and perform effectively in the long run.     

外资企业与供应链上的社会责任

外资企业无疑对中国经济的发展发挥了积极作用。在企业社会责任浪潮中,在华外资企业能给中国带来什么?跨国公司的社会责任理念能否也伴随着资金、管理和技术一并来到中国,影响并带动其他企业在全球供应链范围内共同履行社会责任,形成不同企业之间共同发展的良好局面?     

Celebrity altruism: the good,the bad and the ugly in relationships with fundraising charities

• Enlisting or retaining the support of celebrity volunteers is a crucial element in the fundraising and communications strategies for many third sector organisations. But whilst there is a plethora of literature on volunteer motivations, there has been little exploration of the relationships between celebrity volunteers and the charities that they support. Furthermore, the limited theory that exists appears to be based on the experiences of fundraisers and other media specialists with little primary research on attitudes of celebrities themselves. This paper therefore considers celebrity/charity relationships on the basis of existing volunteer motivation theory and attitudinal data from a sample of 208 celebrity volunteers associated with a major fundraising charity in the UK. The findings indicate that the motivation of celebrity volunteers may be much closer to those of other charity volunteers than might be expected from other literature on celebrities. In addition, the study found that amongst other factors, celebrity volunteers typically prefer their engagements to be simplistic and expedient in nature, but that where possible, the engagement activity should be fun and rewarding. It also reveals that individual motives for supporting charities are varied in nature and range from purely altruistic tendencies at one end of the continuum to egoistic motives at the other. In addition, the study indicates that factors such as security and trust in the endorsed organisation are a key motivating factor for many.

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

英国开放大学的学习者支持服务与质量提高(下)

艾伦·泰特教授认为,远程开放教育是由三个重要因素构成的,包括课程资源建设、学习支持服务和系统管理模式。英国开放大学以其开放的办学思想、灵活的办学方式、编写高质量的媒体教材、建立严格的教学质量保障体系和完善的学习支持服务系统等特色而闻名于世。英国质量保障局开展的学生满意度调查显示,英国开放大学学生对开放大学所提供的学习支持服务给予了充分的肯定,学生满意度连续三年名列前茅,说明英国开放大学能够将学习者的利益考虑在先,满足了学生对开放大学的期待。在构建远程教育学习支持服务体系的过程中,英国开放大学已经形成了自己的运行模式,它的学习支持服务系统建设值得借鉴。中央农广校对外交流处组织翻译了英国开放大学两名教授在第22届ICED世界大会上的论文,分两期连续刊登,供大家学习参考。     

Earnings announcement return extrapolation

Review of Accounting Studies - We propose that extrapolative beliefs about earnings announcement (EA) returns may contribute to the understanding of EA return patterns. We construct a theoretically...     

The combined effects of positive and negative affect on job satisfaction and counterproductive work behavior

Management researchers have paid more attention to the role of affect in the workplace in the last two to three decades. While it is clear that positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA) should be associated with positive and negative employee attitudes and behaviors, respectively, we know little about their combined effects. In this study, we provide preliminary evidence concerning the potential complexity of the interplay between PA and NA in affecting job satisfaction and counterproductive work behaviors (CWB). Results of polynomial regression analyses from a sample of 216 employees showed that congruence of PA and NA at high level leads to the higher level of job satisfaction and CWB than they are congruent at low level. For incongruence situations, PA higher than NA leads to higher level of job satisfaction and a lower level of CWB than when NA is higher than PA. Theoretical implications, limitations and future directions are discussed.

     

The link between formality and procedural fairness: The influences of precision,sensitivity and role clarity

This study investigates the complex and not straight-forward association between formality and procedural fairness. It examines the mediating roles of precision of performance measures, sensitivity of performance measures and role clarity. Using survey responses of functional managers of Australian manufacturing firms, the study finds that the link between formality and procedural fairness is mediated by sensitivity of performance measures and role clarity. Role clarity also mediates the link between sensitivity of performance measures and procedural fairness. Our study contributes to the literature by identifying two important factors through which formal performance evaluation can enhance procedural fairness, which is a source of performance motivation.