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Business organizations are evermore expected to behave conscientiously, but a lack of clarity remains regarding this strategy for business-to-business (B2B) brands. This paper aims to develop and validate a B2B brand conscientiousness model that identifies what factors are driving this approach.

The research model is validated through a three-stage study that collects insights from high-level executives, mid-level managers and employees in B2B firms. Whereas the first two exploratory stages follow a qualitative approach to identify what factors motivate B2B firms to be conscientious and develop a model, the third stage empirically tests the proposed model through structural equation modeling.

The results suggest that brand conscientiousness is viewed as an important strategy by B2B stakeholders. Whereas perceived risk discourages, external and internal stakeholder expectations and a firm’s financial commitment to a cause encourage, brands to pursue a conscientious approach. Furthermore, a B2B conscientious strategy must be perceived as authentic. Long-term commitment to the cause, strategic alignment of brand values with the cause and a congruent delivery of the brand’s promise are the drivers of this perceived authenticity.

This paper contributes to the emerging knowledge on B2B conscientious brands by confirming the importance of this approach in a B2B context, identifying the factors that B2B stakeholders – executives, managers and employees – believe are driving it and highlighting the importance and identifying the factors that drive its perceived authenticity.

Healthcare practitioners, according to legislations in most Western countries, may refuse to perform some medical activities that conflict with their moral and religious values. The Roman Catholic Church has declared in official documents that doctors should not perform or facilitate activities considered immoral such as abortion and euthanasia. The goal of this paper is to suggest new options for regulating conscientious objection of Roman Catholic healthcare practitioners.

Much ink has been spilled in recent years over the controversial topic of conscientious objection in health care. In particular, commentators have proposed various ways with which we might distinguish legitimate conscience claims from those that are poorly reasoned or based on prejudice. The aim of this chapter is to argue in favor of the “reasonableness” approach to conscientious objection, viz., the view that we should develop an account of “reasonableness” and “reasonable disagreement” and use this as a way of distinguishing licit and illicit conscience claims. The author discusses Rawls’ account of “reasonableness” and “reasonable disagreement,” and consider how this might guide us in regulating conscientious objection in health care. The author analyzes the “public reason” account offered in Card (2007, 2014), and argue that we should modify Card’s account to include a consensus among regulators about what counts as “basic medical care.” The author suggests that Medical Conscientious Objection Review boards should consider whether conscience-based refusals are based on defensible ethical foundations.

The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between accuracy and conscientiousness among people working in a tidy/messy work environment.

A laboratory experiment was conducted, where participants performing a simple task in a highly controlled environment were sorted into two different treatments, a tidy or a messy work environment.

The results of this study suggest that conscientious people commit more errors in a messy environment than in a tidy environment. Therefore, one of the most significant findings to emerge from this study is that a messy environment could be detrimental to the accuracy of conscientious people.

This study is limited in several respects. First of all, the sample is not large, with 80 participants; some variables, such us IQ levels, fatigue levels, caffeine consumption, etc. were not controlled for. Third, the task was restricted to inputting data into a computer.

Taken together, these findings suggest the need to promote excellence in work environment tidiness, because highly conscientious employees will work with greater accuracy, while the less conscientious will not be affected. Therefore, overall, accuracy will be better. Consequently, the managers of the organization should be committed to defining policies about high standards of tidiness in the workplace environment.

This is the first study to provide evidence of the moderation of the tidy/messy work environment in the relationship between conscientiousness and human accuracy. The present study sheds light on the impact of messy work environment on accuracy of high conscientious people, inducing them to work in a defective way.

Force Structure is an important aspect of the PMMM and helps define the nature of civil–military relations. It is in the realm of conscription that the dimension of force structure finds particular relevance in the Taiwan context. Moreover, while there have been military restructuring projects and programs that have made detailed changes one way or the other, the big picture remains: Taiwan’s is a conscript-based military. Therefore, it is this aspect of force structure wherein the importance of public perception lies, and the results of this research show that attitudes toward military conscription are impacted significantly by self-identification, with the vast majority wanting the ROC government to keep conscription, rather than moving forward with the All-Volunteer Force transformation. In terms of the attitudes toward conscientious objection, results show that the younger a respondent is, the more they support conscientious objection. Moreover, the more supportive a respondent is to women serving in the military, the more they support conscientious objection. Taken together, this would seem to indicate that citizens, especially young people, regard the matter of military service as a choice that should be made by the individual in question – either male or female. Given the fact of conscription, persons with a valid reason for conscientiously objecting should not be forced to serve, or punished if they refuse to do so. Thus it seems that people recognize a need for conscription, whether as a means to promote good citizenship habits among young men, or because of the China threat, but that opting out of such a system should be accommodated.

As B2B firms face increasing scrutiny due to increased stakeholder awareness of environmental and social concerns, doing business with a conscience has become an important imperative. Despite a growing focus on conscientious corporate branding (CCB), the construct has never been clearly defined, and many of the exemplars used to depict CCB have focused on a B2C context. The purpose of this research paper is to define CCB, to develop a framework that leaders can apply to build and manage a conscientious corporate brand and to demonstrate application of the components of the framework in the B2B context.

This study uses an exploratory approach and focuses on extant literature relating to operating with a conscience, including organizational purpose, ethical leadership, ethicalization of the organization, stakeholder co-creation, sustainability and corporate social responsibility.

This study shows how companies in a B2B context can use a framework that includes dimensions of purpose, ethics, stakeholder co-creation, sustainability and CSR to build a CCB through reconciling and integrating leadership and stakeholder perspectives to create and communicate sustainable and responsible behavior.

This study opens the door for further research into the actions required to build CCBs. There is a need to validate the CCB framework in future studies.

This study identifies how to build a conscientious corporate brand and applies it in the B2B context.

This study expands our understanding of CCBs by providing a definition and framework to guide scholars and practitioners. Given the paucity of focus on CCB in the B2B context, the authors exemplify the framework using B2B examples.

Though prior research has addressed customer engagement (CE) with a focal object (e.g. a brand), the dynamics characterizing customers' engagement with different objects and the potential spillover from a customer's engagement with one object to that with another remains tenuous, exposing an important literature-based gap. The authors, therefore, develop a model proposing the existence of a spillover effect from customers' brand engagement to their engagement with brand-related content and suggest customers' personality trait of conscientiousness to moderate this effect.

An online survey-based experiment using 380 Danish Facebook users was conducted to test the model.

The results suggest customers' brand engagement as a significant predictor of their engagement with brand-related content, corroborating the proposed spillover effect. A weaker spillover effect is observed for highly (vs less) conscientious customers, substantiating the moderating role of customer conscientiousness. Moreover, customer conscientiousness is found to interact with brand content-related (i.e. commenting/content creation) task type and brand type (i.e. utilitarian/hedonic) (e.g. more conscientious customers are less likely to engage in brand-related content creation vs. commenting tasks), weakening the spillover effect.

This study extends prior research by quantitatively corroborating an intra-individual CE-based spillover effect from customers' brand engagement to their engagement with brand-related content. The authors also unearth a moderating role of customer conscientiousness, which interacts with brand- and brand content-related task type, on the spillover effect, informing the development of digital marketing strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to validate previous research in ethical branding by testing a conceptual framework on corporate branding using “the conscientious dimension”.

This article tests a framework for conscientious corporate brands (CCBs) by investigating environmental and climate change issues as well as internal and external corporate codes of ethics as CCB dimensions. The empirical context is based upon South African business‐to‐business relationships.

The findings indicate that four distinctive conscientious corporate brand dimensions exist.

This current study contributes to the better understanding of and more knowledge on conscientious corporate brand values. Opportunities for future research are provided as the study has explored new aspects of corporate branding.

This study offers managerial implications particularly for practitioners located in emerging markets such as South Africa.

This study validates the multidimensional nature of CCBs.

The 2008/2009 World Financial Crisis underlined the importance of social responsibility for the sustainable functioning of economic markets. Heralding an age of novel heterodox economic thinking, the call for integrating social facets into mainstream economic models has reached unprecedented momentum. Financial Social Responsibility bridges the finance world with society in socially conscientious investments. Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) integrates corporate social responsibility in investment choices. In the aftermath of the 2008/2009 World Financial Crisis, SRI is an idea whose time has come. Socially conscientious asset allocation styles add to expected yield and volatility of securities social, environmental, and institutional considerations. In screenings, shareholder advocacy, community investing, social venture capital funding and political divestiture, socially conscientious investors hone their interest to align financial profit maximization strategies with social concerns. In a long history of classic finance theory having blacked out moral and ethical considerations of investment decision making, our knowledge of socio-economic motives for SRI is limited. Apart from economic profitability calculus and strategic leadership advantages, this paper sheds light on socio-psychological motives underlying SRI. Altruism, need for innovation and entrepreneurial zest alongside utility derived from social status enhancement prospects and transparency may steer investors’ social conscientiousness. Self-enhancement and social expression of future-oriented SRI options may supplement profit maximization goals. Theoretically introducing potential SRI motives serves as a first step toward an empirical validation of Financial Social Responsibility to improve the interplay of financial markets and the real economy. The pursuit of crisis-robust and sustainable financial markets through strengthened Financial Social Responsibility targets at creating lasting societal value for this generation and the following.

This paper attempts to validate a conceptual model for conscientious corporate brands (CCB) by exploring environmental and climate change issues together with perceptions of the internal and external effectiveness of corporate codes of ethics as dimensions of CCBs.

By surveying organizations, the paper attempts to extend and validate previous research in ethical branding by proposing an additional empirically grounded conceptual model of “the conscientious dimension” of corporate brands.

The CCB model was tested on a sample of small-, medium- and large-sized companies in Canada, which may indicate less generalizability to larger companies or in other countries and contextual settings.

The CCB-framework provides insights into the relationship between the natural environment, climate change and corporate codes of ethics, which organizational managers might relate to their organization.

This empirical study extends previous research by studying the willingness among business managers to support aspects of conscientious corporate brands (CCBs) in business-to-business relationships: when considering the impact of their brands on the natural environment and climate change, and when considering their corporate codes of ethics. Such findings imply that ethical conscientiousness is not just a rider to brand value; rather, it is an integral dimension in the manufacturer-supplier relationship.