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.     

Compliance and ethics programs: competitive advantage through the law

This paper aims to address whether deploying compliance and ethics programs will assist US organizations in implementing the internal mechanisms necessary to achieve a competitive advantage from the law. My focus will be on the US legal system, as the corporate compliance and ethics programs examined are based on mitigation provisions contained in the US Federal Sentencing Guidelines. In particular, I propose that organizations can attain a sustainable competitive advantage from the law by considering the following questions: Do compliance and ethics programs assist organizations in achieving a better understanding of the law? Are compliance and ethics programs a cost-effective approach for coping with an organization’s legal issues? Can compliance and ethics programs aid organizations by preventing these legal issues from occurring in the future? Will compliance and ethics programs support organizations in reframing legal issues as business opportunities?     

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.     

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.     

Factors Affecting Hurricane Evacuation Intentions

Protective actions for hurricane threats are a function of the environmental and information context; individual and household characteristics, including cultural worldviews, past hurricane experiences, and risk perceptions; and motivations and barriers to actions. Using survey data from the Miami‐Dade and Houston‐Galveston areas, we regress individuals’ stated evacuation intentions on these factors in two information conditions: (1) seeing a forecast that a hurricane will hit one's area, and (2) receiving an evacuation order. In both information conditions having an evacuation plan, wanting to keep one's family safe, and viewing one's home as vulnerable to wind damage predict increased evacuation intentions. Some predictors of evacuation intentions differ between locations; for example, Florida respondents with more egalitarian worldviews are more likely to evacuate under both information conditions, and Florida respondents with more individualist worldviews are less likely to evacuate under an evacuation order, but worldview was not significantly associated with evacuation intention for Texas respondents. Differences by information condition also emerge, including: (1) evacuation intentions decrease with age in the evacuation order condition but increase with age in the saw forecast condition, and (2) evacuation intention in the evacuation order condition increases among those who rely on public sources of information on hurricane threats, whereas in the saw forecast condition evacuation intention increases among those who rely on personal sources. Results reinforce the value of focusing hurricane information efforts on evacuation plans and residential vulnerability and suggest avenues for future research on how hurricane contexts shape decision making.     

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.     

Management consultancy’s role in delivering lasting [triple bottom line] benefits

Abstract

Management consultants have become ubiquitous in helping improve organizational performance. This paper presents an investigation of the impact of their interventions on organizational sustainability and growth through the performance improvement work carried out for and with their clients. The paper presents the findings of a questionnaire survey of 440 respondents from 206 countries; 197 of respondents were Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) and 243 from large organizations. There is a particular focus on knowledge transfer in terms of urgency and impact of the work with regard to the extent to which consulting interventions in SMEs, as well as large multinational corporations, embed long-term sustainability practices.     

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.     

Public Understanding of Ebola Risks: Mastering an Unfamiliar Threat

Ebola was the most widely followed news story in the United States in October 2014. Here, we ask what members of the U.S. public learned about the disease, given the often chaotic media environment. Early in 2015, we surveyed a representative sample of 3,447 U.S. residents about their Ebola‐related beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. Where possible, we elicited judgments in terms sufficiently precise to allow comparing them to scientific estimates (e.g., the death toll to date and the probability of dying once ill). Respondents’ judgments were generally consistent with one another, with scientific knowledge, and with their self‐reported behavioral responses and policy preferences. Thus, by the time the threat appeared to have subsided in the United States, members of the public, as a whole, had seemingly mastered its basic contours. Moreover, they could express their beliefs in quantitative terms. Judgments of personal risk were weakly and inconsistently related to reported gender, age, education, income, or political ideology. Better educated and wealthier respondents saw population risks as lower; females saw them as higher. More politically conservative respondents saw Ebola as more transmissible and expressed less support for public health policies. In general, respondents supported providing “honest, accurate information, even if that information worried people.” These results suggest the value of proactive communications designed to inform the lay public's decisions, thoughts, and emotions, and informed by concurrent surveys of their responses and needs.     

Codes, Stakeholders and Business Philosophy

Two concepts that business ethics has made its own are codes of practice and stakeholding. They pre-date the self-conscious, organised business ethics effort. Codes are standard in large businesses in the United States, but are not so widely used elsewhere. Stakeholder models remain largely aspirational. Both concepts have critics, and their practical value has yet to be proved. Despite this, they have the potential to transform the quality of business life. Their main strength is in combination with an appropriate business philosophy, which does not yet exist. Widely respected business values can be identified, but they need to be founded on basic principles, which is a requirement for any discipline to move from ideology to maturity. Some possible principles are suggested. An illustration is taken from financial services regulation, where markets are generally seen (to borrow Rousseau's phrase) as having to be ‘forced to be free.’ This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Analysis of human capital development in Puerto Rico: summary and conclusions

This study explored whether perceptions of organizational business ethics differ by hierarchical levels. The study sample included more than 40,000 executives, mid-level managers and non-managerial employees from business organizations in six countries: Brazil, China, Germany, India, the UK and the US. We found that executives provided the most positive assessment of ethical business culture within their respective organizations. Employees’ assessments were less positive, and mid-level managers’ assessments fell in the middle. Organizational size and respondents’ age were not related to differences in responses. Statistically significant differences among hierarchical levels were found in Brazil, the US, Germany, the UK and China. Differences were not significant in India. Executives with longer tenure at the same organization tended to provide higher ratings of organizations’ ethical cultures, while managers’ and employees’ ratings tended to decrease with time.     

Do Business Leaders Have Role‐Model Obligations to Be Good Political Actors?

This article raises an issue about corporate political activity that is different from those typically addressed by business ethicists. It examines the role‐model status and obligations of the business leaders who direct such activity. This approach has two potential benefits. First, since ethicists often appeal to role‐model obligations and many are concerned about corporate political activity, business ethics literature would benefit from expanding the examination of role‐model status and obligations to encompass the business leaders who direct political activity. Second, it will help ethicists determine what we should demand from business leaders who direct such activity. This is important given the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision in 2010 that guarantees corporations the free‐speech right to make political expenditures in support of political causes. I seek to demonstrate that we should hold business leaders morally accountable for how they direct political activity because of their role‐model status that arises from their greater fame, authority, or power than ordinary persons possess.     

Aiming for Excellence: Reflections on the Advanced Institute of Management Research and its Elite

In 2002, the UK government launched the Advanced Institute of Management Research, a major initiative intended to raise the quality of research in business schools. Rather than offering research grants in open competition, AIM deliberately funded a select few leading lights in management. Insufficient allowance was made for the Research Assessment Exercise, which measured research excellence in terms of papers published in top journals. The AIM's elite exploited its existing publishing advantage, and AIM provided further resources to aid their efforts. The AIM recruited willing acolytes to work with its elite in fashioning the sort of papers required by the top journals of management – positive papers, consensual and endlessly citable. Analysis of the publishing patterns of AIM senior fellows reveals research cliques and publication silos rather than a network organization. Much as the elite saw its AIM funding as recognition of its own excellence, so AIM itself came to be seen as acknowledgement of the excellence of management research as a whole. That AIM existed to raise management research from intellectual poverty was forgotten. The AIM was wound up in 2012, having spent £30 million, most of it on the subject's elite. The problems that beset management research remain.     

The Conflict between U.S. Patent Protection and Technological Innovation: Analysis and Problem Solving by Means of the Integrated Causal Model for Innovated Ethic

Criticisms of patent laws for technological innovations in the United States reveal a multifaceted milieu of problems centered around the protection of short‐term economic gain and individual property rights. In this article, we consider this a conflict between current patent laws and the innovation capabilities of organizations. We propose a solution that enables the company to assure its long‐term survival in the face of these restrictions. This presumes that the firm will at least maintain its innovation capacities while preserving the company's ethical values and those of its social environment. We offer a theoretical model that is designed to help managers and policymakers reorient their governance strategies for managing the innovation process, using the “ethics of responsibility,” which establishes the link to individual moral values at the beginning of a governance process as well as the consequences of a decision. Our integrated causal model of ethical innovation for patents is presented and implications for global organizations and possible solutions for patent law process failure are offered.     

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.

Corporations and economic inequality around the world: The paradox of hierarchy

Using time-series data from the US since 1950 and from 53 countries around the world in 2006, this chapter documents a strong negative relation between an economy's employment concentration (that is, the proportion of the labor force employed by the largest 10, 25, or 50 firms) and its level of income inequality. Within the US, we find that trends in the relative size of the largest employers (up in the 1960s and 1970s, down in the 1980s and 1990s, up in the 2000s) are directly linked to changes in inequality, and that corporate size is a proximal cause of the extravagant increase in social inequality over the past generation. We conclude that organization theory can provide a distinctive contribution to understanding societal outcomes.     

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.     

Inter‐Organizational Fit,Relationship Management Capability,and Collaborative Performance within a Humanitarian Setting

Donors and governments are increasingly calling for more collaborative relationships between humanitarian organizations (HOs), to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of humanitarian operations by exchanging information, knowledge, and resources. This study examines the relative efficacy of partners' characteristics (i.e., compatibility and resource complementarity) and partners' relationship management capability on collaborative relationships, incorporating mutual trust and reciprocal commitment as two mediator constructs. We use Partial Least Squares to examine the proposed hypotheses using a sample of 191 respondents. Data are collected through a web‐survey of international humanitarian non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) in countries across Africa, Asia, and South America. The results reveal that (i) resource complementarity and relationship management capability are significant factors influencing collaborative performance through their effects on partners' mutual trust and reciprocal commitment, and that (ii) partners' compatibility (i.e., missions, values, and operational methods) does not significantly drive success or failure of collaboration between international NGOs. These results suggest that given the present diversity of HOs' characteristics, the success of collaboration is associated with the partners' level of understanding of each other's objectives, operations, and values, and to the extent to which organizations efficiently communicate and coordinate their joint activities. The managerial implications of the findings are also discussed.     

股权结构与公司业绩关系的行业特征--来自冶金、医药、机械与IT行业的实证证据

冶金与医药行业第一大股东提高了业绩,冶金行业业绩明显靠固定资产投资拉动.医药第二大至第三大持股与公司业绩显著负相关,但第二大至第三大股东抑制了第一大股东占用上市公司资金.机械行业业绩,第一大持股与其负相关,第二至第十大与其正相关.前十大股东中具有信托投资公司的上市公司,关联资金占用显著高.IT行业,业绩与生产性股东个数显著正相关,与固定资产投资负相关.业绩与股份法人类别的相关性符号是:国家股与境内发起法人股之和,冶金与医药,显著为正,机械行业为负;募集法人股,机械行业显著为正,冶金为负;流通股,冶金与医药为负,但IT为正.     

Ensuring units invariant slack selection in radial data envelopment analysis models,and incorporating slacks into an overall efficiency score

This paper introduces a new methodology ensuring units invariant slack selection in radial DEA models and incorporating the slacks into an overall efficiency score. The CCR and BCC models are units invariant in their radial component, but not in their slack component, thus changing the units of measurement of one or more variables can change the models' solution. The proposed Full Proportional Slack (FPS) methodology improves the slack selections of the CCR and BCC models by producing slack selections that (a) are units invariant, thus producing fully units invariant models, (b) maximize the relative improvements represented by the slacks, and not their values, and (c) measure the full slacks that need to be removed from their corresponding variables. The FPS methodology is a fully oriented methodology first maximizing the improvements in the variables on the side of the orientation of the model. The Proportional Slack Adjusted (PSA) methodology incorporates the FPS slacks into an overall efficiency score, making it easier to interpret and use the results. The FPS and PSA methodologies are illustrated using an input oriented VRS Loan Quality DEA model with data from the retail branch network of one of Canada's largest banks.