Institutional Predictors of and Complements to Industry Self‐regulation with Regard to Labor Practices

In recent years, there has been increasing managerial and academic attention given to a variety of mechanisms for companies to respond to stakeholder concerns about global business ethics. One area that merits further analysis is the role of industry‐level cooperation regarding issues in global business ethics such as labor practices. There are two main issues that we will address in this article: institutional pressures that predict when an industry will create a code of conduct and institutional complements for an industry‐level code of conduct to be “successful” with regard to responding to stakeholder concerns about international business operations. We offer a number of propositions—bringing together work from both the corporate social responsibility and (neo)institutional theory literatures—with regard to both predictors and complements of industry self‐regulation in reference to labor practices.     

The role of organizational ethics committees

Health care services are increasingly provided in an atmosphere that is fractured by conflicting ethical concerns. This trend had been most noticeable in institutional settings. In response, hospitals have for many years had ethics committees. Their purpose has been to guide providers, patients, and families when decisions with ethical implications have to be made. The shift in focus within the health care delivery system away from hospitals and more to managed care systems and to domination of decision making by primary care providers suggests that expansion of the ethics committee concept may be advisable.     

企业营销道德水准测试的指标体系及评价方法研究

本文是“企业营销道德水准测试及评价系统”课题的前期研究成果。作者首先通过探测性调研确定了影响营销道德水准评价的企业营销行为,并在定量调研基础上将其归并为七个评价营销道德水准的维度,同样还根据定量调研的结果确定了企业营销道德水准的测评方法,为营销道德水准测试与评价系统的建立构筑了重要基础。     

Effects of Context and Feelings on Perceptions of Genetically Modified Food

Recently, there has been a surge of interest in the role of feelings in framing perceptions and decisions about risk, yet no study has specifically examined the impact of feelings on perceptions/judgments about biotechnology. This exploratory study investigated current perceptions of genetically modified (GM) food to examine (1) the effects of context (making judgments about GM food at the same time as rating other current areas of concern), and (2) the effect of feelings of dread (integral affect) and background feelings of stress (negative incidental affect) on risk judgments about GM food. An established psychometric method (semantic differential task) used with a sample of 126 adults (recruited "topic-blind," mostly from a student population) showed that, when rated in the context of other current concerns such as human cloning and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), there was less concern about GM food than might have been anticipated. Participants were recruited "topic-blind" in order to ensure that they were unaware that the focus of the research was on GM food specifically (and thus preventing biased recruitment to the study). Relative to 19 other current concerns GM food was "not dreaded," not viewed as "unethical," was judged as "controllable," and was seen as the least "risky" of all the issues studied. GM food was viewed as a "hot topic," a new risk, and as relatively unnatural (although it was not the highest rated concern on this scale). Ratings of risks across concerns by individuals experiencing high levels of negative incidental affect (stress) did not differ significantly from those reporting low stress.     

Strangers in a Strange Land: Shock,Disappointment, and Adjustments Experiences of Expatriates in Central Asia

Increasing globalization is driving an increase in diversity and interaction. A more mobile and international workforce frequently requires that individuals try to understand the norms of their “new” society. This paper provides a preliminary exploration of the types of issues and concerns raised by expatriates working in a new foreign environment. In particular, the paper uses a hybrid survey/interview methodology to identify specific issues raised by expatriates working in Kazakhstan, Central Asia.

The ethics of tolerance and the evolution of smoking and gambling as public policy issues

Since 1964, there has been an expansion in the amount and the variety of state-sponsored and state-sanctioned gambling opportunities throughout the US. At the same time, the number of laws prohibiting cigarette smoking have grown enormously. It is striking how one of these activities is tolerated even encouraged by public policy makers while the other is rapidly being prohibited by them. This paper will examine this phenomenon in three parts: (1) defining what is meant by the ethics of tolerance and contrasting it with the ethics of sacrifice; (2) giving a brief historical synopsis of how the gambling and smoking issues have evolved over time; (3) drawing the implications of a shift to an ethics of tolerance on future public policy issues.     

Culture, Cosmopolitanism, and Risk Management

Most cultural approaches to risk management deal with the connections between the forms of social relations within groups and the risk concerns of those groups. According to these theories, a certain limited set of different relational forms (usually three, four, or five) lead to specific, different and conflicting, risk concerns. In contrast to these theories, cosmopolitanism is an approach to culture that focuses, not on forms of sociality, but on changes among forms—expansions and contractions in the inclusivity of forms and movement by persons from one form of sociality to another. Relative to other cultural theories, cosmopolitanism thus is much more concerned with the solution of risk management problems than with their origins. Cosmopolitanism can be thought of as a cultural continuum, with cosmopolitanism at one end and pluralism at the other. Cosmopolitan persons are more open to cultural change—and thus the solution of risk management problems. In this article, we outline our new theory of cosmopolitanism, describe a method for measuring it and present an experimental study that tests some implications of the theory. Results from the study support the theory by showing that, compared to pluralistic respondents, cosmopolitan respondents are more inclusive in their risk management judgments—that is, they express equal concern for a local and a national issue, whereas the pluralistic respondents express greater concern in the local case. We discuss the risk management implications of a cosmopolitan approach to culture.     

Business student ethical values anew in the 1990s

This paper uses a Rokeach Value Survey methodology to again ask the question, now in the mid 1990s, whether business student ethics are different from non-business student ethics. Additionally, the paper addresses the question of whether a course can alter or change student ethics and values during a semester. Thirdly, this paper attempts to operationalize and empirically test and measure the new ethical concepts of moral management and moral maximization.     

TQM: a paradigm for physicians

Change, even when for the better, is always accompanied by apprehension and even outright fear. It is therefore not surprising to hear health care workers, especially physicians, expressing their concerns about this "new" management philosophy through a spectrum of reactions that vary from skeptical or grudging acceptance to outright dismissal of all of the new "alphabet soup" associated with TQM.     

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.     

针对灰色营销进行道德培训的实验效果

本文以道德培训为操纵变量,以工商管理专业的大学生为实验对象,研究了灰色营销的道德培训对人们灰色营销道德判断和行为倾向的影响.结果发现:第一,针对灰色营销的短期道德培训能够显著改进被培训者针对灰色营销的道义论评价和目的论评价,但是不能降低其灰色营销行为倾向;第二,尽管针对灰色营销的短期道德培训能够改进人们针对灰色营销的道义论评价和目的论评价,并且后者对人们的灰色营销行为倾向也有显著影响,但是它们不能中介短期道德培训对灰色营销行为倾向的影响.本文最后讨论了研究结果的理论贡献与实际应用.     

Corporate ethics: evidence from Islamic banks

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether banks’ management behavior is related to corporate ethics. We employ earnings-management and expense-preference measures to evaluate management behavior. Using a very large sample of banks from 15 countries and controlling for a number of bank- and country-level factors, we find that managers in Islamic banks are less likely to engage in unethical business practices compared to those in commercial banks. We also document that Shari’ah supervisory boards embedded in Islamic banks affect and shape managerial behavior and mitigate agency problems. These results establish a link between corporate ethics and management behavior through Shari’ah and Shari’ah supervisory boards.     

The impact of life stage and societal culture on subordinate influence ethics: A study of Brazil,China, Germany,and the U.S.

In this paper, we investigate the effects of societal values and life stage on subordinate influence ethics. Based on the evolving crossvergence theory of macro-level predictors of values evolution, we demonstrate the applicability of crossvergence theory in the micro-level context. Furthermore, our study provides the first empirical multi-level analysis of influence ethics utilizing a multiple-country sample. Thus, we illustrate how the breath of crossvergence can be expanded to provide a multi-level theoretical foundation of values and behavior evolution across cultures. Specifically, we integrate micro-level life stage theory and macro-level societal culture theory to concurrently assess the contributions of each theory in explaining subordinate influence ethics across the diverse societies of Brazil, China, Germany and the U.S. Consistent with previous research, we found significant societal differences in influence ethics. However, we also found that life stage theory played a significant role in understanding influence ethics. Thus, our findings expand the crossvergence perspective on societal change, indicating that key micro-level predictors (e.g., life stage) should be included in cross-cultural research.     

Leaders' impression management during organizational decline: The roles of publicity,image concerns,and incentive compensation

In this study, we develop and examine a model of leaders' impression management during organizational decline by elaborating on the roles of publicity, image concerns, and incentive compensation. We propose that the publicity of decline is an important antecedent of leaders' impression management during decline. We also examine how leaders' image concerns mediate this positive relationship. In addition, we consider the relative influence of incentive compensation and fixed compensation on the relationship between leaders' image concerns and their impression management during decline. Our results, based on a specially-designed management simulation game conducted with experienced Chinese managers, show that high publicity of decline elevates leaders' image concerns, which in turn increases their impression management during decline. In addition, incentive compensation strengthens rather than weakens the effects of leaders' image concerns on their impression management. We discuss the implications of leaders' impression management during organizational decline.     

The Ethics of Management Research: An Exploratory Content Analysis

Management academics have tended to rely on ethics codes developed by social researchers in related fields to inform their research practice. The point of this paper is to question whether this remains a viable approach in the current climate that is characterized by a significant increase in ethical regulation across the social sciences. We suggest that management researchers face ethical issues of a different nature to those most frequently confronted by other social science researchers, and argue for more explicit acknowledgement of contextual factors involved in management research. An exploratory analysis of the content of ethics codes formulated by nine social scientific associations is undertaken to identify the main ethical principles they cover and to analyse their underlying ethical tone. Drawing attention to the principle of reciprocity, which is found in very few codes, we suggest that an ethics code could be used to formulate new ways of thinking about management research relationships. Despite the risk that ethics codes may encourage instrumental compliance with minimal ethical obligations, we suggest they also have the potential to reflect a more aspirational agenda. The development of an ethics code for management research should therefore be seen as a potentially worthwhile project.     

Was hat Work-Life-Balance mit dem Protestantismus zu tun?

Relations between work life balance and protestantism. Considerations on the sociology of religion by May WeberThis article is based on the thesis, that specific trends of protestant ethics can be seen as a reason of job stress and lacking work life balance. In coaching, these problems are often important topics. The author refers to the analysis of Max Weber of the protestant ethics as historical precondition of the development of capitalism. This thesis is finally illustrated by a case study.     

Was müssen Führungskräfte können?

Ethics Education complements business administration only if it teaches strategic competencies that help managers to become better leaders. To this end, this article sketches an ordonomic approach to an economic ethics for competitive markets, to a business ethics for firms (corporate citizens), and to a process ethics for new governance. The core idea of this ordonomic approach is the win-win concept of mutually beneficial value creation. Thus, ordonomics is compatible with the market economy and at the same time supplements the management education in business schools: This approach systematically identifies strategic competencies that enable managers to display the kind of entrepreneurial leadership that is necessary for firms to fulfill their social function of value creation—by making use of moral commitments as a factor of production.     

Corporate control and underinvestment

This paper reports a study of how the benefits that large shareholders derive from their control of a firm affect the equity issue and investment decisions of the firm. I introduce an explicit agency cost structure based on the benefits of control of the largest shareholder. In a simple extension of the model developed by Myers and Majluf (J Financial Econ 13:187–221, 1984), I show that underinvestment is aggravated when there are benefits of being in control and these benefits are diluted if equity is issued to finance an investment project. Using a large panel of US data, I find that the concerns of large shareholders about the dilution of ownership and control cause firms to issue less equity and to invest less than would otherwise be the case. I also find that it makes no significant difference whether new shares are issued to old shareholders or new shareholders.     

私人关系对投机行为的抑制作用何时更有效？——传统文化与市场经济双重伦理格局视角的研究

现有研究发现边界人员私人关系能够抑制渠道投机行为,但对于如何增强以上治理效果的研究仍十分有限,尤其缺乏本土语境下的研究。本研究遵从双重伦理格局,即传统文化伦理和市场经济伦理的引导,依据制度理论和渠道治理理论,分别在企业外部制度环境和企业内部管理要素层面,探索私人关系抑制投机行为的有利情境。通过收集双边匹配一手调查数据以及二手数据对研究假设进行实证检验,研究发现,在受儒家思想影响较深、市场化水平较高的地区以及在企业领导对边界人员支持力度较大的企业中,私人关系抑制投机行为的效果会增强。随着市场化水平的提高,儒家思想影响增强私人关系对投机行为抑制作用的效果愈发明显。本研究为双重伦理格局对私人关系抑制投机行为效果的影响提供了经验证据,回应了与私人关系治理机制相关的学术争论,有助于丰富本土语境下的渠道治理机制研究。     

Chemical and Radiation Environmental Risk Management: Differences, Commonalities, and Challenges

Driven by differing statutory mandates and programmatic separation of regulatory responsibilities between federal, state, and tribal agencies, distinct chemical and radiation risk management strategies have evolved. In the field this separation poses real challenges since many of the major environmental risk management decisions we face today require the evaluation of both types of risks. Over the last decade, federal, state, and tribal agencies have continued to discuss their different approaches and explore areas where their activities could be harmonized. The current framework for managing public exposures to chemical carcinogens has been referred to as a "bottom up approach." Risk between 10(-4) and 10(-6) is established as an upper bound goal. In contrast, a "top down" approach that sets an upper bound dose limit and couples with site specific As Low As Reasonably Achievable Principle (ALARA), is in place to manage individual exposure to radiation. While radiation risk are typically managed on a cumulative basis, exposure to chemicals is generally managed on a chemical-by-chemical, medium-by-medium basis. There are also differences in the nature and size of sites where chemical and radiation contamination is found. Such differences result in divergent management concerns. In spite of these differences, there are several common and practical concerns among radiation and chemical risk managers. They include 1) the issue of cost for site redevelopment and long-term stewardship, 2) public acceptance and involvement, and 3) the need for flexible risk management framework to address the first two issues. This article attempts to synthesize key differences, opportunities for harmonization, and challenges ahead.