Ethical Considerations in Management Research: A ‘Truth’ Seeker's Guide

Within a growing Knowledge-Management context, it would appear that Management Research calls for researchers to explicitly understand their own values, have increasing capacity for reflexivity and anticipate various ethical dilemmas that emerge from the research endeavour. This paper provides an overview of the philosophy of ethics and focuses on a researcher's ethical reasoning. It provides a framework for understanding causes of ethical dilemmas in the context of management research and provides strategies for a way forward through such dilemmas. The paper, finally, outlines exercises pertinent to research ethics and ‘hands on’ research praxis.     

Ethical Considerations in Management Research: A ‘Truth’ Seeker''s Guide

Within a growing Knowledge-Management context, it would appear that Management Research calls for researchers to explicitly understand their own values, have increasing capacity for reflexivity and anticipate various ethical dilemmas that emerge from the research endeavour. This paper provides an overview of the philosophy of ethics and focuses on a researcher's ethical reasoning. It provides a framework for understanding causes of ethical dilemmas in the context of management research and provides strategies for a way forward through such dilemmas. The paper, finally, outlines exercises pertinent to research ethics and ‘hands on’ research praxis. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Notwendigkeit,Ziele und Inhalte einer Ethik-Ausbildung in der Betriebswirtschaftslehre

Although business administration scholars in German-speaking countries increasingly engage in business ethics research, their business schools have so far not systematically included ethics related contents into their standard curricula. Based on an understanding of business administration as an applied discipline that should not shun the scientific discussion of normative statements, this article argues that our field needs to address ethical questions not only in research but also in teaching. The subsequent analysis addresses aims, contents, and methods of teaching business ethics in higher education. Rather than teaching students ‘moral truths’, the main aim of business ethics education is seen in providing students with a variety of theories, concepts, and tools that are able to support them in ethical decision processes, which they are likely to encounter in their management careers.     

Codes of Ethics: What Are They Really and What Should They Be?

Codes of ethics are prevalent in major corporations around the world. They are seen as the first tangible commitment to being ethical. This paper examines codes of ethics and tries to establish what they are, how they are developed and their net utility. We then proffer the idea of codes as the first part of a five-stage process that leads to an overall corporate commitment to being ethical in one's business dealings.     

Corporate Ethics Codes: A New Generations' Tool for Strategic Global Management and Decision-Making

The premise of this article is that it is important to train domestic and international executives in management ethics using corporate ethics codes. Incorporating ethics codes into the professional development of executives in business and industry contributes to the institutionalization of codes in the global workplace. Ethics institutionalization imbues corporate structures with understanding, both internally and externally, of the concepts of ethics. At an east coast University School of Management a Comparative Code Method (CCM) was developed and tested. Among the major findings, was that the use of corporate codes quickly transitions employees from an individual ethical perspective to a corporate ethical perspective. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Management and Business Ethics: A Critique and Integration of Ethical Decision-making Models

This paper critically reviews the literature relating to the management of ethics within organizations and identifies, in line with other authors, a gap between theory and practice in the area. It highlights the role of management (both as an academic discipline and from a practitioner perspective) in bridging this gap and views managers, with their sense of individual ethical agency, as a key locus of ethics within organizations. The paper aims to address the theory–practice gap by surveying the business ethics literature in order to identify, draw together and integrate existing theory and research, with a particular emphasis upon models of ethical decision-making and their relationship to work values. Such an endeavour is necessary, not only because of the relative neglect of management practice by business ethics researchers, but also because of the current lack of integration in the field of business ethics itself. The paper outlines some of the main methodological challenges in the area and suggests how some of these may be overcome. Finally, it concludes with a number of suggestions as to how the theory–practice gap can be addressed through the development of a research agenda, based upon the previous work reviewed.     

Some Implications for Management Development of Research into Managers' Moral Dilemmas

In this paper, we present two cases of moral dilemmas as told by the managers who had faced them. We analyse the cases, drawing on frameworks developed by Toffler (1986), Kohlberg (1981) and Maclagan (1990). We also comment on the broader findings of the research from which the cases were taken. These analyses and findings and those of other researchers (e.g. Waters et al., 1986) suggest a number of requisite ‘moral attributes’ for managers and have, we argue, significant implications for the curriculum for ethical education and development for managers and intending managers. One is that case material needs to reflect more strongly the actual experiences of practising managers; another is that there is scope for wider use of experiential methods on management ethics courses. We conclude with a call for a multifaceted approach to ethical education as a lifespan process entailing the development of personal and interpersonal skills and qualities, and self-knowledge as well as cognitive skills. While we acknowledge that ethical education needs to take account of learners' differing levels of prior experience, stages of moral development and levels of learning maturity, our over-riding concern is that learners are prepared for and helped to live through the very ‘real’ dilemmas that they are likely to experience in managerial work.     

Moral Behaviour in Organizations: The Contribution of Management Education and Development

SUMMARY The concurrent growth of interest in management competencies and management development and in business ethics, exposes a need to bring these two fields together. The moral dimension to organizational behaviour should be considered when management education and development programmes are being designed. Those concerned with ethics in business and management should look beyond approaches based on codes of conduct and traditional educational methods. In this paper the idea of management competence is conceptualized broadly, with insight drawn from sources in education and social psychology. It is argued that ideas derived from Kohlberg's work on moral development can provide the basis for management development programmes in which theoretical understanding of ethical theory and moral issues is augmented by commitment to personal principles, a well integrated sense of personal identity, and relevant interpersonal skills, acquired through experiential learning.     

Participatory Organizational Research: Examining Voice in the Co‐production of Knowledge

This paper advances participatory methods in management research. We propose the term participatory organizational research to describe this adjunct to action research. We illustrate the potential of the method to allow sometimes unheard organizational members to generate alternative perspectives that can offer the potential for the co‐production of new forms of knowledge that are locally relevant. Participatory methods originate from work with marginalized groups and have been used more commonly in community and organizational development. The aim of such research is, generally, to change the social and organizational conditions within which participants operate by using their perspectives as active participants to develop alternative possibilities. As such, this research method has significant potential for management researchers in providing the means for unheard organizational members to voice their perspectives: a central component, we argue, in knowledge co‐production. Based on a participatory study of care quality in elder care institutions, we examine in detail how participatory organizational research can enable voice and explore some of the structural limitations particularly in respect of research ethics.     

Ethical leadership: A review and future directions

Our literature review focuses on the emerging construct of ethical leadership and compares this construct with related concepts that share a common concern for a moral dimension of leadership (e.g., spiritual, authentic, and transformational leadership). Drawing broadly from the intersection of the ethics and leadership literatures, we offer propositions about the antecedents and outcomes of ethical leadership. We also identify issues and questions to be addressed in the future and discuss their implications for research and practice. Our review indicates that ethical leadership remains largely unexplored, offering researchers opportunities for new discoveries and leaders opportunities to improve their effectiveness.     

Ethical leadership and follower voice and performance: The role of follower identifications and entity morality beliefs

Previous studies have established the relationship between ethical leadership and a variety of positive follower outcomes. Follower organizational identification has been found to mediate the relationship between ethical leadership and follower job performance. In this research, we incorporate a second distinct and theoretically important type of social identification process, relational identification with the leader, along with organizational identification, and examine their mediating effects on follower performance and voice outcomes. Further, we bring the implicit theory of morality to the behavioral ethics literature and examine follower morality beliefs as a moderator. Using a Romanian sample of 302 followers under the supervision of 27 leaders, we found that ethical leadership has an indirect effect on follower job performance and voice (through the mediating mechanisms of both organizational and relational identifications) and that these relationships are stronger for followers who held the implicit theory that a person's moral character is fixed.     

Ethics beyond the model: How social dynamics can interfere with ethical practice in operational research/management science

Responding to a call for more attention to be given to ethics within operational research, Marc Le Menestrel and Luk Van Wassenhove have recently outlined a perspective on the relationship between OR models and ethics that squarely ties ethical engagement to daily practice and, more specifically, to the manner in which a practitioner uses a model or other technique in a particular setting. They refer to this approach as “ethics beyond OR models”.This paper seeks to extend the debate on this topic by examining some of the difficulties of ethical action when it is defined in these terms. Specifically the paper seeks to show how the social dynamics that circumscribe much professional practice can easily override good intentions on the part of the people concerned. Ethical practice dictates that those involved in OR/MS practice should seriously contemplate their own involvement in the process of knowledge production and be fully aware of the wider ramifications of employing particular modelling techniques and other tools. However, this is not always easy since the complex social dynamics that surround an inquiry can surreptitiously undermine these intentions. In extreme cases, these processes can create an ethical trap that those involved may not be fully recognise until after the event.In exploring such a disjuncture between ethical intentionality and outcomes the paper re-examines and reflects upon a major consulting assignment which was led by the author and subsequently published through a leading journal and text.     

Supplier code of conduct–state-of-the-art and customisation in the electronics industry

In the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR), one efficient way to improve the ethical behaviour of a company is the implementation of a code of conduct. When focused on suppliers, this code is referred to as the supplier code of conduct (SCoC). Specific, application-oriented research on SCoCs is rare. The main goals of the present article are to define the state-of-the-art in SCoCs and to show how this review can be used in industrial practice when defining a company-specific SCoC. This article uses the electronics industry as an example. The state-of-the-art review of the content of the SCoCs is structured in five main categories of issues: labour standards, health and safety, environment, ethics and compliance. The practical relevance of this review is demonstrated by applying it in the development of a customised SCoC for a company as a part of the company's corporate risk management activities. This review uses the content analysis of SCoCs based on the website disclosures of the Forbes Fortune 2000 (Technology Hardware & Equipment) companies; which yielded 24 SCoCs. The application was done in an action research framework with a partner company, and the results were verified with the help of a focus group consisting of 10 companies.     

Rethinking the Concept of Sustainability

The role of business ethics in developing more sustainable societies is crucial, but we first have to review the concept of sustainability itself and its ethical roots. The objective of this work is to rethink the current concept of sustainability by providing it with a sound universalistic ethical rationale. We propose that ethics is the key by which disputes and conflicts among the economic, social, and environmental domains can and ought to be resolved. This work argues that if we fail to recognize the essential ethical grounding of sustainability, or if we take it for granted, then sustainability can easily lose its way and can end up unjustified.     

Working Adults and Personal Business Ethics in South East Asia: a Comparative Study in Thailand and Vietnam

Global leaders and managers have been facing new challenges in the twenty-first century since globalization has created a much more integrated and borderless business environment. One of the key issues that they constantly deal with is business ethics. The global economy has made ethical issues become more complex and challenging. Businesses nowadays face urgent demands to act ethically and responsibly. In order for global leaders and managers to manage such a cultural diverse and complex workforce, they must have the ability to understand these complex issues and act ethically. They also need to possess adequate leadership skills to lead an ethical organization in a multinational environment. Thus, understanding and recognizing the cultural differences as well as the ethical standards of people in different countries are critical to the success of global leaders and managers. The purpose of this study is to investigate the perception of working professionals on business ethics in the two high-context cultures in South East Asia: Thailand and Vietnam. Using the Univariate Analysis of Variance method and adopting the widely-used Clark and Clark’s Personal Business Ethics Scores (PBES) measure, this study will compare the level of ethical maturity of the respondents based on a variety of variables including gender, business law course taken, code of conduct, ethics training, and government work experience. The authors will provide a thorough literature review on business ethics as well as the current ethical issues, i.e., bribery and corruption, in the two countries, together with practical suggestions and implications for educators, managers, and employees.     

Engineering ethics: The responsibility of the manager

This paper addresses the growing importance of ethics in today's society. Many professional societies have adopted formal codes of ethics for their organization and members. However, the engineer as a manager has an obligation not only to his profession but to his employees, organization, and the public as well to enforce ethical decisions and behavior at all times.     

The Impact of Ethical Tools on Aggressiveness in Financial Reporting

The proposed adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in the United States has ignited a debate as to whether the principles‐based nature of these standards better serves the interests of investors. While it is argued that these principled‐based standards will encourage more transparent financial reporting than the current rules‐based U.S. standards, critics argue that IFRS will invite more aggressive financial reporting through the liberal exercising of professional judgment. This empirical study aims to understand what individual and organizational factors may affect aggressiveness when making accounting judgments. In particular, we examine the influence that prior ethics training, codes of ethics and an individual's predominant moral reasoning schema have on adherence to company policy in an accounting‐related (depreciation) judgment. Results of the study show that respondents with prior ethics training are more likely to adhere to company accounting policy than those who have not had formal ethics education. Respondents presented with a company ethics code also were less aggressive in their accounting judgments than those who were not presented with a code prior to reading the scenario. Finally, decision aggressiveness was moderated by individuals who used conventional moral reasoning schemas.     

中国情景下消费者的伦理购买意向研究——基于TPB视角

本文运用大样本问卷调研法,基于TPB视角重点分析消费者的伦理购买决策机制,旨在考察中国情景下影响消费者伦理购买意向的深层次因素。研究结果发现,行为态度、主观规范与感知行为控制会显著影响消费者的伦理购买行为意向,其中主观规范是购买意向最有影响的预测变量,表明中国情景下消费者在进行伦理购买决策时更倾向于遵从社会规范的影响;进一步感知行为控制不仅直接显著作用于伦理购买意向,还通过行为态度对伦理购买意向产生间接的重要影响,表明在中国情景下如何真正提高消费者伦理购物时的感知行为控制程度是企业实施伦理营销时面临的关键性问题。总体而言,本文结果表明,修正后的计划行为理论对中国情景下消费者的伦理购买意向能够进行有效地解释与预测,说明计划行为理论具有良好的跨文化适应性。最后,本文为中国企业伦理营销战略的实施提供重要建议。