Human Rights in Global Business Ethics Codes

The last decade has witnessed renewed attempts to regulate the conduct of transnational corporations. One way to do this is via global ethics codes. This paper examines seven such codes (the Sullivan Principles, UN Center for Transnational Corporations’ Draft Code, OECD Guidelines, ILO's Tripartite Declaration, the Caux Round Table Principles for Business, Global Compact, and the United Nations Norms) to determine their coverage of human rights and concludes that if these initiatives succeed, particularly the more recent codes, transnational corporations may emerge as a major force in promoting human rights globally.     

CSR as Value Attunement within Governance Processes: Stakeholder Dialogue,Corporate Principles and Regulation

I argue that a governance perspective on corporate social responsibility (CSR) makes it possible to explain why the concept will always be under‐defined, is normative and thus political by nature, and is and should be difficult to measure. The perspective also makes it possible to understand the interaction between corporate values and stakeholders values. In processes of dialogue within governance systems and governance structures, changing insights into the principles of CSR can lead to regulation or its adjustment. Power is important in these dialogues. Principles are at least partly shaped within governance systems and governance structures, and they influence the outcomes of corporate policies. Changes within the regulatory framework could also lead to changes in the principles of CSR. Value attunement processes could lead to regulation, which again influences the governance structures and thus the power of stakeholders within the dialogue. The theoretical model provided helps to analyze why CSR is different in companies, cultures and academic traditions.     

Corporate Governance in Asian Countries: Has Confucianism Anything to Offer?

Although Confucianism is a resilient cultural tradition in Asian societies, its role in their corporate governance systems is ambiguous. Confucian values have been pushed to the periphery because of a preoccupation in these countries to emulate corporate governance systems from the West. This article argues that Confucianism has much to offer in enhancing director conduct and corporate governance standards. As the attention of the global business community turns eastwards, it is opportune to revive interest in Confucianism and to explore ways in which it can be integrated formally into companies' governance systems.     

公司创业精神、市场营销能力与市场绩效的关系研究

公司创业精神是企业所拥有的最为异质的资源之一,它对企业的市场绩效有着显著的影响.通过以中国的调研数据来探索公司创业精神的丰富内涵,并验证公司创业精神与市场绩效之间的关系.同时,从理论和实证2个方面研究了公司创业精神对市场绩效的作用途径,发现市场营销能力在其中发挥着中介的作用.     

Conjoint effects of interacting strategy-making processes and lines of defense practices in strategic Risk Management: An empirical study

The ability to contain adverse effects of major risks under turbulent conditions and exploit the opportunities they present are fundamental concerns in strategic management and various institutions promote enterprise risk management (ERM) to deal with these challenges. Yet, our knowledge about how ERM affects performance and interacts with corporate strategy-making processes is limited. The ERM frameworks impose first and second lines of defense practices to integrate business operations and corporate risk oversight. Emergent strategies generate responsive initiatives and strategic planning coordinates updated actions. Hence, this study analyzes the conjoint effects of these ERM practices and strategy-making processes based on a large corporate sample and finds that ERM practices depend on strategy-making to attain effective risk outcomes. The application of ERM frameworks can, therefore, not be assessed in isolation, but must consider corporate strategy-making. This has implications for the way we conduct research on strategic risk management, how executives approach risk oversight and policy-makers impose formal risk governance requirements.     

中国企业文化概念范畴的本土构建

本研究的目的是要探索中国背景下的企业文化维度特征,构建一套适合中国本土情景的企业文化概念范畴,为中国企业文化的理论研究、量表开发及模型建构奠定概念基础。我们通过设计一个开放式问卷调研的归纳性分析和一个典型文本的内容分析,探讨中国情境下企业文化的概念维度。从收集的定性数据中,一共得到中国企业文化的12个概念维度,比较分析结果表明,中国与西方国家企业文化的概念范畴既有相同之处,又存在显著的差异,这进一步表明中国企业文化开展高水平本土化研究的必要性。     

Corporate Governance and Performance During Consolidation of the United States and European Defense Industries

Under a market-oriented corporate governance system, the United States defense industry consolidate quicker and gained a comparative advantage in simple measures of firm performance, including profit margin and market share, than the continental European defense industry, which is more oriented toward stakeholder relationships in corporate governance. The defense industry in the United Kingdom, also characterized by market-oriented governance, performed well. On a wider set of measures related to firm performance and other stakeholders, the evidence is less clear. Concerns have been expressed about the European defense industry's survival in its current form. Likewise, concerns have been raised about the increasing level of concentration in the United States, its potential effect on innovation, and the erection of trade barriers. This paper concludes that corporate governance concepts are useful in analyzing firm conduct and performance in the defense industry and other traditionally -- 'national' industries. It also concludes that policy concerns might successfully be addressed through increased Transatlantic cooperation, attention to the flexibility inherent in the Anglo-American system of corporate governance, and recommendations to modify public procurement policies.     

Equator Principles: Bridging the Gap between Economics and Ethics?

The hypothetical conflict between self‐interest, corporate interest, and the common good is one of the hottest debated issues in business ethics. This article focuses on a particular corporate social responsibility approach within the field of sustainable (project) finance, which has the potential—given that certain reform measures are adopted—to overcome the alleged trade‐off between self‐interest and the common good. The approach is labeled as the Equator Principles (EPs) framework, which celebrated its tenth anniversary and the formal launch of the third generation of the EPs (EP III) in 2013. The article shows how companies can theoretically be both profitable and socio‐environmentally responsible by adhering to the EPs. The article proceeds as follows: Before moving on to the EPs, section 2 defines the key terms self‐interest and common good. Section 3 then analyzes the EPs from a business ethics perspective. Section 4 shows how the EPs can help in solving the potential trade‐off between self‐interest and the common good—provided that the EPs are substantially revised. These required reform steps are discussed in section 5. The article ends with a summary of the main findings.     

The influence of psychopathic traits on the acceptance of white-collar crime: do corporate psychopaths cook the books and misuse the news?

Due to several empirical shortcomings in the research of personality characteristics in ethical decision making, we address in this paper the concept of corporate psychopathy in the organizational context. Corporate psychopaths are individuals successfully working in organizations, but are selfish, manipulative, and exhibit a lack of empathy, remorse, and conscience; therefore, they may be viewed as risk factors for organizations. While there is abundant literature on the connection between clinical psychopathy and criminal behavior, such research is scarce in the business context where successful psychopaths operate. Thus, we examine if the malevolent traits of corporate psychopaths predict the acceptance of different forms of white-collar crime. In doing so, we conduct two survey studies in which we first measure participants’ psychopathic tendencies and then assess their acceptance of either an accounting fraud or an insider-trading situation. Consistent with our hypotheses and across both studies, we find a highly significant relationship between personality traits that are associated with corporate psychopathy and the acceptance of white-collar crime. This paper discusses the implications of these findings and identifies some potentially useful approaches for excluding corporate psychopaths from organizations.     

The Evolution of Korean corporate HRD: launching,growing pains,and transforming

Enthusiasm and greater attention from the international HRD community to Korea has motivated us to conduct research on the evolution of Korean corporate HRD in order to explore where we are now and where we are heading. Research literature on the topic, however, was minimal. The purpose of this study was to examine the evolution of Korean corporate HRD through interviews with 18 HRD researchers and practitioners who have witnessed the field’s growth. In addition, we reviewed the literature and company archives of HRD activities. We identified three major historical milestones of Korean corporate HRD including: the launching period in the 1980s, the growing pains period in the 1990s, and the transforming period from the 2000s to the present. We addressed major trends and issues of Korean corporate HRD in an attempt to generate a future research agenda.     

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.     

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.     

Shareholders and managers: Who care more about corporate diversity and employee benefits?

We test two competing theories that explain a firm’s engagement in corporate diversity and employee benefits: socially responsible investment theory and management overinvestment theory. We find that publicly-traded companies with strong shareholder rights are more likely to promote women and/or minorities to the positions of CEO and board of directors in their organizations, conduct business with women- and/or minority-owned operations, and provide better family benefits to their employees than firms with strong management power. These findings indicate that the companies with strong shareholder rights engage more actively in internal aspects of CSR activities, which supports the socially responsible investment theory rather than the management overinvestment theory. Shareholders (i.e. institutional investors) tend to integrate their social goals (i.e. internal CSR issues) and financial goals into their investments. In response to these changes, managers should engage in the internal aspects of corporate social issues more aggressively as the agents of shareholders.     

所有权安排对大股东控制权私利的影响研究

尽管所有权安排将通过所有权的性质、控制方式和结构比例等主要特征影响大股东控制权私利的攫取行为,但在不同国别和公共治理模式下却存在着利益目标抉择和诉求的相对差异。本文结合分级履行出资人职责的制度背景下,中央和地方国资委分别掌握上市公司终极控制权的基本特征,着重从所有权的控制方式和结构比例两方面阐释了我国上市公司大股东攫取控制权私利的动机、能力和实际效果差异。本文的研究结论将为股权分置改革和国有资产管理中配套法规的建立提供经验依据。     

A Swiss‐Army Knife? A Critical Assessment of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) in Ghana

Within the current global atmosphere where a universally accepted police force is nonexistent, there are several voluntary norms and codes of conduct that exist to guide how corporations behave worldwide. These have come as a result of many years of poor performance in the areas of social, financial, and environmental responsibility. Such norms are expected to prescribe and proscribe certain types of corporate behavior but when one examines the reality on the ground, the story is not that straightforward. This article assesses the effectiveness of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) in the Ghanaian context with a focus on the mining sector. Based on primary qualitative data the argument is that even though the EITI is performing some function, it has ways to go before it can become an across‐the‐board viable tool for transparency and proper accountability. Five prevailing weaknesses are discussed to underscore this case.     

Your E‐mail Trail: Where Ethics Meets Forensics1

This article addresses ethical and legal issues arising from the increasing use of e‐mail and other forms of instant written communication in the conduct of business. E‐mail communications are often casual and informal. Yet e‐mail is a written record that can be more permanent and widely accessible than a paper communication. This article focuses on the implications of this fact, including (1) how individuals compromise their own privacy by the voluntary use of e‐mail; (2) how e‐mail has complicated the duty of confidentiality of employees to employers, and professionals to clients; (3) whether the use of e‐mail affects ethical deliberation and choice; and (4) the use of e‐mail as evidence of corporate conduct and intent in civil and criminal litigation. The article suggests that e‐mail users think “forensically” about their e‐mail—i.e., consider its potential as evidence in the context of other emails and underlying events—before pressing the “send” button.     

The Role of NGOs in Ameliorating Sweatshop‐like Conditions in the Global Supply Chain: The Case of Fair Labor Association (FLA), and Social Accountability International (SAI)

Over the last 20+ years, globalization has made international trade and investment more efficient and productive. In the absence of coordinated global regulatory regimes, it has also made multinational corporations (MNCs) impervious to social concerns in the countries where they operate. There is considerable debate in the academic, political, and business arena as to the causes of the apparently inequitable distribution of benefits between labor and capital. Notwithstanding, the relative merits of this debate, and facing tremendous societal pressure, companies have adopted voluntary codes of conduct to ensure that workers making products for them in poor and developing countries are protected from hazardous working conditions and receive wages that meet local laws and market conditions. These codes, however, suffer from a lack of credibility and proof of substantive compliance. A new type of nongovernmental organization (NGO) has emerged that monitors a company's compliance with prespecified standards and provides assurance to the external stakeholders that the company has fulfilled its voluntary obligations. From an historical perspective, this has been an innovative phenomenon where the monitoring organization purports to act as an honest broker to ensure all concerned that the company/industry has fulfilled its obligations. In this article, we undertake a thorough examination of two such organizations, that is, Fair Labor Association, and Social Accountability International, that have played a pioneering role in bridging the gap between societal expectations and corporate performance. We examine their governance structures, operating procedures, monitoring standards, and public disclosure of findings, and above all, their success in improving the level of corporate compliance with their self‐created codes or standards. Unfortunately, our findings and conclusions are disappointing. In our view, the two groups have mostly failed to meet their avowed goals. Rather than using their NGO status to help companies improve their code compliance, they have suffered from managerial capture and have been reduced to corporate apologists.     

Making corporate governance count: the fusion of ethics and economic rationality

Corporate governance codes extensively appeal to ethical standards of conduct. Rather than being articulated alongside economic axioms, ethical and moral precepts are intertwined within neo-classical economic argumentation across corporate governance standards. This paper explores the fusion between ethics and modern economic rationality and reflects on the scientisation of economics and ethics in academic discourse. The argument is then made that the enlistment of ethics within the epistemologically privileged posture of economics characterises corporate governance codes. The UK Combined Corporate Governance Code of 2006 is analysed to draw out the paper’s contention.