Corporate Social Responsibility Audit: From Theory to Practice

This research examines the possibility of developing a new corporate social responsibility (CSR) auditing system based on the analysis of current CSR literature and interviews conducted with a number of interested and knowledgeable stakeholders. This work attempts to create a framework for social responsibility auditing compatible with an existing commercially successful environmental audit system. The project is unusual in that it tackles the complex issue of CSR auditing with a scientific approach using Grounded Theory. On the evidence discovered to date in the literature review and the interviews, CSR seems to be perceived by many as the social strand of sustainable development. However, there is far less agreement regarding its measurement. Both the literature review and the interview analysis indicate that developing an applied CSR auditing procedure will be a challenging task. This is principally due to the lack of formal study of this complex subject, which, despite the widespread debate it has engendered, still lacks a single and broadly accepted definition. The concepts developed from the findings of this research, together with the key factors identified in a literature review of CSR, were developed into a prospective CSR audit protocol.     

Comparative Perspectives on the Ethical Orientations of Human Resources,Marketing and Finance Functional Managers

The human resources profession emphasizes the personal and interpersonal aspects of work, that make it conscious of complex ethical issues in relationships in the workplace, while finance specialists are conversant with routine compliance with regulations. Marketing professionals are under pressure to produce revenue results. Thus, this research hypothesized that human resources managers would be more disapproving of unethical conduct than both finance and marketing functional managers, and that finance managers would be more disapproving than marketing managers. When asked to evaluate instances of unethical behavior in vignettes, human resources and finance managers were both significantly more disapproving than marketing managers. However, human resources managers were not significantly more disapproving than finance managers. Explanations for the results lie in the divergent antecedent conditions, objectives, perceptions of ethical problems and demands of the various functions. Alternative behavior patterns to resolve ethical dilemmas and expected consequences by the different functions also define their ethical orientations. Average responses on the disapproving side from all three functional groups are explained by two complementary trends that promote ethical awareness among all functional managers. One is the adoption of homogeneous conventions in ethical business practice. The other trend is the increase in ethical awareness specific to each of the functional professions.Eleanor OHiggins is on the faculty of the Business Schools at University College Dublin. She specialises in teaching, research and publications in the areas of business ethics, corporate social responsibility, corporate governance and strategic management. She chairs the International Theme Committee of the U.S. Academy of Management. She is a member of the United Nations Global Compact Learning Forum, of the Business Ethics Faculty Group of the Community of European Management Schools (CEMS) and of the Board of Management of The Institute of Directors Centre for Corporate Governance at University College Dublin.     

Business Ethics in a Transition Economy: Will the Next Russian Generation be any Better?

This study investigated students’ perceptions of ethical organizational climates, attitudes towards ethical issues, and the perceived relationship between ethical behavior and success in business organizations. Comparisons were made between the attitudes of these future managers with previously published studies of Russian managers’ attitudes. A survey of 100 business students in three Moscow universities showed that their attitudes toward ethical behavior were more negative than those of Russian managers. No significant differences were found in the perceptions or attitudes of students who had attended an ethics course and those that did not. The implications for both managers and researchers were reported.     

Dealing with Swindlers and Devils: Literature and Business Ethics

Part of the value of stories is moral, in that understanding them, and the characters within them, is one way in which we seek to make moral sense of life. Arguably, it has become quite common to use stories in order to make moral sense of business life. Case method is the standard teaching method in top business schools, and so-called “war stories” are customary for on-the-job training. Shakespeare is a trendy purveyor of leadership education. Several books and articles have been written on the intersection between literature and business and/or business ethics. Still, it is one thing to claim that literature can contribute to our understanding of business conduct, but yet another to claim that literature can contribute to␣the related goal of improving moral conduct in business. Supporters of the claims tend to presume they go together, while skeptics and detractors often discard them as a package. These claims warrant further investigation if they are to be perceived by business scholarship and practice as worthy of serious attention, not just a quaint search for lowbrow moral fables or a vain pursuit of highbrow poetry. One instrumental function of literature is to imitate life, thereby expanding our vision beyond our parochial interests; to see literature merely as a didactic instrument to serve business interests misses the point that literature should expand understanding, our sense of what in addition to business is interesting and valuable.     

Managerial and Other White-Collar Employees’ Perceptions of Ethical Issues in their Workplaces

Understanding what types of issues working adults perceive as ethical in their workplaces will allow better teaching of business ethics. This study reports findings of a thematic analysis of 764 ethical challenges described by working adults in a part-time MBA program and combines its findings with the other published studies on perceptions of ethical issues in the workplace. The results indicate that most people are assured about what they describe as ethical transgressions although experts might disagree. It also highlights certain issues and contexts as being more frequently perceived than others. Ideas for future research in this area are also explored.     

Professional Ethics – a Managerial Opportunity in Emerging Organizations

Professional Ethics, viewed as a managerial challenge and opportunity in this study, deals with the often overlooked conceptions, actions and behavior of individuals who see themselves both as members of a profession and as members of an organization. Managers have to deal with this dual loyalty and inherent potential for conflict. This is of particular importance for new types of organizations when wanting to develop and sustain an ethical platform for the ultimate goal – assuring that future business decisions of individuals are in "ethical balance" with the organization's own values and goals.     

管理与伦理结合:现代企业管理的必然趋势

在着力探讨管理与伦理结合这一现代企业管理的必然趋势的基础上,充分论证了管理与伦理结合的必然性和重要意义,并详细阐述了伦理管理的核心思路。     

The Economic Inefficiency of Secrecy: Pension Fund Investors’ Corporate Transparency Concerns

In the wake of recent corporate scandals, this paper traces the growing power of pension funds to provide managerial oversight of the firms they hold in their investment portfolios. Increasingly pension funds are exercising their legitimate rights as owners to raise the corporate governance standards of the firms they invest in. Within corporate governance generally, pension funds are shifting their attention away from managerial accountability and toward measures that increase transparency in firm-level decision-making. Pension funds use transparency to ensure that shareholders are the primary interest being served by the firm. Transparency not only aligns managers and owners, it also raises issues of firm behaviour that allow other stakeholders to engage the corporation more broadly. I contend that secrecy is economically inefficient. When organizations are opaque and interests are secret, decision-making can and does distort efficiency. I examine recent pension fund corporate governance campaigns with particular reference to the California Public Employees Retirement System. Dr. Hebb is a senior research associate at the Labor and Worklife Program, Harvard University and the Oxford University Centre for the Environment. She is researching the role of US public sector pension funds and urban revitalization as lead investigator on a two-year Rockefeller and Ford Foundation grant. Her doctoral work at Oxford University examined the impact of pension fund corporate engagement on the corporate governance, social and environmental standards of firm behaviour. She was a Clarendon Scholar at Oxford University and was awarded the prestigious William E. Taylor Fellowship (2003) from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Government of Canada. Dr. Hebb is also a recipient of the York University Schulich School of Business National Research in Financial Services and Public Policy Scholarship (Canada). Dr. Hebb is also the Director of the Capital Strategies Program at the Carleton Centre for Community Innovation (3ci), Carleton University, Canada. Here her work focuses on the financial and non-financial impact of pension fund economically targeted investment in Canada as part of a three-year SSHRC Initiatives in the New Economy grant.     

Privacy at Work – Ethical Criteria

New technologies and practices, such as drug testing, genetic testing, and electronic surveillance infringe upon the privacy of workers on workplaces. We argue that employees have a prima facie right to privacy, but this right can be overridden by competing moral principles that follow, explicitly or implicitly, from the contract of employment. We propose a set of criteria for when intrusions into an employee's privacy are justified. Three types of justification are specified, namely those that refer to the employer's interests, to the interests of the employee her- or himself, and to the interests of third parties such as customers and fellow workers. For each of these three types, sub-criteria are proposed that can be used to determine whether a particular infringement into an employee's privacy is morally justified or not.     

The Legal, Ethical, and Managerial Implications of the Neutral Employment Reference Policy

The litigious environment surrounding employers today has caused them to be overly fearful of providing candid yet adverse employment references. Their attempts to minimize litigation risk created by the dismissal of a vindictive employee have clouded their judgment when asked to assist in the dissemination of employee information. This is alarmingly illustrated by the growing number of employers who have blindly adopted a neutral reference policy. Unfortunately, indiscriminate application of this policy will not necessarily preclude litigation, but, rather, foster it. It is imperative that employers carefully weigh the tangible and intangible costs of a reference defamation suit against their duty legally, ethically, and managerially to disclose vital information about a former employee.