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Combating and detecting fraud is a daunting task, especially in the Nigerian banking sector, because it necessitates a thorough understanding of the nature of fraud, as well as how it can be performed and concealed by fraudsters. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to empirically examine the relationship and the predictive ability between amoral behavior, control climate and perceived job insecurity on fraudulent intentions among bank employees in Lagos Metropolis.

Descriptive and cross-sectional designs were used to select employees from 12 banks using predetermined scales. In total, 1,080 questionnaires were distributed, but 950 were retrieved and analyzed. The study used multistage sampling by applying cluster, purposive and simple random sampling techniques. Correlation and hierarchical regression analyses were used to analyze the data.

A significant positive relationship and predictive abilities were established between employee’s amoral behavior and fraudulent intentions on the one hand, and employee’s job insecurity and fraudulent intention on the other, going by the additional variance identified when each variable was added in each step, implying that employees who exhibit amoral behavior are likely to engage in fraudulent intentions. In the same manner, employees who feel insecure are likely to engage in fraudulent acts because they would want to secure their future. However, there was a significant negative relationship and predictive ability between control climate and fraudulent intention; implying that inculcating a strict control climate minimizes or totally eradicates employees’ intentions to commit fraud.

This paper is limited to amoral behavior, control climate, perceived job insecurity and fraudulent intentions; it is limited to employees in the banking sector, with a special focus on emerging economies, Nigeria, West Africa. The implication of this is that the result may not be generalized to other sectors and other countries.

The practical implication of the study is that managers should be aware that employees who are in danger of losing their jobs are more likely to engage in the fraudulent act, and this should be looked into. Training and retraining, workshops, conferences and seminars on employee morale behaviors as well as strict adherence to ethical codes of conduct are vital to enlighten the employees on the dangers of perpetrating fraud and the impact on themselves and the economy at large. Control climate is a very vital tool in curtailing the incidences of fraud in the organization.

This paper contributes to the knowledge by filling the gaps left by a lack of empirical examination into the combined influence of amoral behavior, control climate and perceived job insecurity on fraudulent intentions, especially among bankers in Lagos Metropolis. It provides management with guides on how to drastically reduce the menace of fraudulent intentions in the banking sector and by extension in other non-banking organizations.

This short viewpoint is a response to a lead paper on professional ethics in the information age. This paper aims to draw upon the authors’ experience of professional bodies such as the ACM over many years. Points of agreement and disagreement are highlighted with the aim of promoting wider debate.

An analysis of the lead paper is undertaken using a binary agree/disagree approach. This highlights the conflicting views which can then be considered in more detail.

Four major agreements and four major disagreements are identified. There is an emphasis on “acultural” professionalism to promote moral behavior rather than amoral behavior.

This is an original viewpoint which draws from the authors’ practical experience and expertise.

To identify the Transcendental Essence of Humanity, the purpose of this paper is to describe in brief what kind of research became possible when the theory of, e.g. autopoiesis, Husserl’s Transcendental Consciousness and the theory of Rhodes and Thame came together to form a “transcendental” interview methodology.

Critical conceptual implications are drawn to form a new research method to explore a de-subjectified inner domain and to search for a possible common essence of humanity.

A Transcendental Emotional Reference was found practically alien to contemporary perspectives. Still, the reference governs the emotional structure of human experience. This different perspective answers basic questions of morality, organization theory and leadership.

The findings of the new research open a new and transparent perspective answering Grey’s question: “What is it to be human?” (Grey, p. 47, 2014.) A perspective shedding new light on the humanities. A research limitation is the number of respondents. Still, being transcendental the findings are theoretically valid for all.

The paper is based on a unique research enabling 32+ (ongoing research) respondents to explore their own and universally shared Transcendental domain.

This study examines the determinants of enforced tax compliance behavior of Malaysian citizens where trust in tax authorities is assumed to be a mediator. Quota sampling method was used to select a sample of 340 participants to participate in a survey. A two-step structural equation modeling (SEM) process was adopted to test a framework comprising 13 hypotheses. Model fit was initially measured using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) while model specification was applied in the second stage to test the structural relationship. The mediating effects of trust in tax authorities were tested via Baron and Kenny (1986) approach, bootstrapping, and AMOS AxB estimand. The findings confirmed that trust in government, trust in tax administrator, power of Inland Revenue Board of Malaysia, and awareness influence enforced compliance. However, tax morale and tax amoral behaviors do not influence enforced compliance. The findings suggest that citizens would fulfill their tax responsibilities if they believe that tax authorities are effective in tax administration. Trust in government fosters trust in the tax authorities. This study contributes to existing literature by confirming the factors that affect enforced tax compliance.

The purpose of this paper is to expand our understanding of the motivations for corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting.

This paper provides a conceptual exploration of the motivation for corporations to provide ESG reports and proposes deterrence theory and avoidance as a complementary explanatory motivation for such reports.

Within this paper it is argued that part of the motivation for some corporations to increase ESG disclosures is to avoid, or mitigate, the risk of class actions and the associated financial penalties. This paper proposes that in Australia the deterrence impact, and ancillary avoidance behaviour, of civil litigation class action provides a further motivation for improving both corporate ESG disclosure and sustainability performance.

This paper extends the social and environmental accounting (SEA) reporting literature by proposing deterrence theory and avoidance as a corporate motivation for environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting. Deterrence is proposed as a different, yet complementary, motivation to the oft‐cited variations of stakeholder and legitimacy theory which are dominant in the SEA reporting motivation literature.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how organizations operate in the absence of a clear regulatory authority in a self-regulating environment. Significant moves towards self-regulation by various political administrations, together with successive waves of deregulation raise questions about the ability and effectiveness of industries and markets to regulate their own behaviour. This is a topical political and social concern with governments often appearing to favour self-regulation as opposed to the constitution of an official regulator. The absence of a regulator and the possibility of voluntary compliance raise a number of issues for the way in which organizations operate and the consequences, both intended and otherwise for organizations and society at large.

Empirically the authors explore the case of an industry leader within the Passive Fire Protection industry, as it adjusts to an increasingly self-regulated market environment. The authors document how organizational members make sense of the regulatory environment and the behaviour of actors within it.

The authors find that discourses of enterprise that underpin self-regulation permit actors a choice between compliance and non-compliance. Whilst also noting the prevalence of notions of morality in terms of how actors make sense of both compliant and non-compliant behaviour. Despite common sense notions that morality is seldom clear cut or unambiguous, the case study reveals that frameworks for understanding behaviour allow participants within the industry to make very clear demarcations between moral (compliant) and amoral (non-compliant) behaviour.

The authors learn how those that are compliant within the industry come to question the effectiveness of the regime to which they comply, thus ultimately undermining the integrity of the regime. In the absence of a strong regulatory regime, some agents draw upon notions of enterprise to justify an individualist, economic and pragmatic approach that makes non-compliance permissible. Thus the discourse of enterprise is present in the justification of both “moral” and “amoral” behaviour, this leads the authors to question the wisdom of policy that promotes the idea of enterprise as effectively ensuring compliance.

The current criminal justice system is pledged to serve and protect society while preserving the rights of those who are accused. The purpose of this paper is to explore the premise of “innocent until proven guilty” and examine whether this assumption truly prevails under the current criminal justice system, or be modified to accommodate a sliding continuum of virtuosity.

This paper is a conceptual paper which relies heavily on the current literature about criminal justice and related ethical issues.

The paper argues that today’s criminal justice system fails to meet the standards of the virtuous continuum and that those who oversee that system need to rethink how the system operates and is perceived by the public if they wish the criminal justice system to be perceived as just, fair, and ethically responsible.

Because this paper is a conceptual paper it does not present research hypotheses.

This paper suggests that “virtue” and “ethics” must be the foundation upon which the criminal justice system is evaluated, and criminal justice must incorporate an ethical standard which is virtuous and fair to all parties and leaders who oversee that system must meet the standards suggested by the virtuous continuum.

This paper is among the first to identify the viewpoint of the virtuous perspective, moral perspective, amoral perspective, and immoral perspective in the criminal justice system.

The discussion on co-innovation inhibitors usually focuses on external actors’ opportunism, related to the loss of intellectual property. However, from the organizational Machiavellianism perspective, inhibitors are not external as the company itself is a source of constraints. Unfortunately, there is a lack of research studies examining the possible negative impact of organizational Machiavellian behavior such as amorality or distrust and desire for control, which could destroy external partners’ trust and commitment. This paper aims to analyze the effect of organizational Machiavellianism on the relationship between co-innovation and innovation performance (product and process innovation).

Structural equations were used to test the research model using survey data from a sample of companies located in an emerging country with a high risk of corruption.

Surprisingly, distrust and desire for control do not moderate the relationship between co-innovation and innovation performance, but do have a positive and direct effect on innovation performance. Conversely, amorality has a negative moderating effect on this relationship.

The study reveals that amorality is an evident constraint of the positive impact of co-innovation, as it diminishes the amount and quality of external actors’ contributions in terms of new ideas and knowledge. In contrast, distrust and desire for control alert the firm about opportunistic behavior by external partners such as technology providers, who may induce the firm to adopt an inadequate technological standard in line with their commercial interests.

Retailers are increasingly forced to enter negotiations with new suppliers and have less time to develop trusting relationships prior to awarding sourcing contract. Such supplier negotiations are often guided by self‐interest‐seeking behavior. However, not all exchange partners behave opportunistically when given the opportunity and little is known about how and when opportunism actually occurs. This research seeks to develop a multidimensional perspective of exchange partners' Machiavellianism that reveals different types of opportunistic motivations in exchange relationships and to extend knowledge of socialization as a safeguard by investigating the efficacy of signaling trustworthiness as a means of reducing the risk of opportunistic behavior in exchanges with partners with different moral standards about opportunism.

The data consist of a sample of 259 purchasing professionals who are members of the Institute of Supply Chain Management and report on their negotiation behavior. Moderated regression analysis is used to analyze the research model.

The results show that opportunistic behavior originates from a multidimensional set of moral convictions held by an exchange partner. Interestingly, signaling a trusting relationship only reduces opportunistic behavior that is due to deceit, but is not effective against cynicism or flattery.

To date, retail managers have addressed potential partner opportunism by designing contractual agreements or by implementing structural and social safeguards. Little is known about how these approaches address partner‐specific causes of opportunism. The study demonstrates the extent to which trust, a popular socialization mechanism in retailing, moderates the degree to which an exchange partner's moral conviction leads to opportunism.

This paper aims to look at some of the implications of organisational psychopaths for organisations and corporations.

This paper defines organisational psychopaths as being those psychopaths who exist at an incidence of about 1 percent of the general population and who work in organisations. The paper describes how these organisational psychopaths are able to present themselves as desirable employees and are easily able to obtain positions in organisations. Without the inhibiting effect of a conscience they are then able to ruthlessly charm, lie, cajole and manipulate their way up an organisational hierarchy in pursuit of their main aims of power, wealth and status and at the expense of anyone who gets in their way.

The paper suggests that, just as criminal psychopaths are responsible for a greater share of crimes than their numbers would suggest, so too organisational psychopaths may be responsible for more than their fair share of organisational misbehaviour including accounting fraud, stock manipulation, unnecessarily high job losses and corporately induced environmental damage.

The paper suggests that having organisational psychopaths running corporations that are themselves, at best, amoral is a recipe for negative consequences.