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Presents a preliminary assessment of the moral implications of hostile takeovers. Argues that prevalent verdicts are premature, and that we should withhold judgement in this regard because there is, as yet, no principled way of adjudicating his opposing positions on the morality of “unfriendly acquisitions”.

Argues that hostile takeovers cannot be morally justified on grounds which involve valuations sanctioned by prevalent interpretations of The Efficient Market Hypothesis. Demonstrates that such “valuations” are morally inadmissible on account of their “circularity”. Recommends a case‐by‐case approach by way of conclusion.

The study examines the process of international market expansion by a relatively new and small franchisor. Particular emphasis is placed on the company‘s efforts to identify a suitable partner in the host country, the adaptation of the concept to address differences in the new market, and the multitude of critical decisions that need to be made when franchising in international markets. The authors also discuss the role that strategic alliances play in the success of international franchising efforts. The paper concludes with the implications of this case for both researchers and practitioners.

Discusses the emergence of postmodernism as a philosophical stance and relates it to a pragmatic business ethic which assumes that the time is right for some social experimentation wherein practical ethical targets are given priority over theory and politics. Suggests that present market conditions make this realistic – the push by green consumers is an example. The managerial auditor may now need to take this business ethic into account.

The issue of business ethics is addressed with the ethical motivations of business concerns coming under closer public scrutiny. The reasons for and the conditions which have helped this renewed interest in making business practices more moral are outlined.

The story of business ethics would seem to be a tale of horses, deckchairs, Molotovs and ostriches. There is little evidence that the growth in organisational codes of ethics (OCoE) in recent years has had much effect on organisational activity. Such was also the experience with the social responsibility debate of the 1970s – a debate which the current business ethics experience so closely parallels. The theme here is that business ethics and social responsibility have failed to “root” because (a) they have remained undefined and imprecise, and (b) organisations have neither the mechanisms for, nor the interest in, their adoption. As a result neither ethics nor responsibility has entered the “soul” of organisations. Commentators have misunderstood this and continue so to do because the bulk of debate in the business ethics arena adopts the individualist orientation that characterises much of the history of the philosophy of ethics.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the appearance of cyberloafing at work, that is, the use of the company’s internet connection for personal purposes, may be due to a workplace that lacks mindfulness and compassion. The authors first hypothesize that supervisors’ mindfulness is related to the mindfulness of their direct followers, and that both are related to employees’ compassion at work. The authors also hypothesize that compassion mediates the link between supervisors’ and followers’ mindfulness and cyberloafing, and that empathic concern mediates the link from compassion to cyberloafing.

A questionnaire was distributed to followers working in groups of three with the same leader in all of the 100 banks in London (UK). Supervisors and their direct reports (n=100) and 100 triads of followers (n=300) participated. The authors applied structural equation modeling (SEM) for analyses.

Results showed that supervisors’ and followers’ mindfulness were significantly related to each other and to compassion at work, but compassion acted as a mediator only in the case of supervisors’ mindfulness. Empathic concern mediated the compassion-cyberloafing link.

The study could suffer from mono-method/source bias and specificities of banks and their work processes can raise concerns about the generalizability of the results.

Findings suggest that mindfulness training may facilitate compassion at work, which, in turn, will restrain the occurrence of cyberloafing at work.

This is the first study to analyze how and why employees refrain from harming their organizations out of compassion.