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1 – 10 of over 157000Qamar Naith and Fabio Ciravegna
This paper aims to gauge developers’ perspectives regarding the participation of the public and anonymous crowd testers worldwide, with a range of varied experiences. It also aims…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to gauge developers’ perspectives regarding the participation of the public and anonymous crowd testers worldwide, with a range of varied experiences. It also aims to gather their needs that could reduce their concerns of dealing with the public crowd testers and increase the opportunity of using the crowdtesting platforms.
Design/methodology/approach
An online exploratory survey was conducted to gather information from the participants, which included 50 mobile application developers from various countries with diverse experiences across Android and iOS mobile platforms.
Findings
The findings revealed that a significant proportion (90%) of developers is potentially willing to perform testing via the public crowd testers worldwide. This on condition that several fundamental features were available, which enable them to achieve more realistic tests without artificial environments on large numbers of devices. The results also demonstrated that a group of developers does not consider testing as a serious job that they have to pay for, which can affect the gig-economy and global market.
Originality/value
This paper provides new insights for future research in the study of how acceptable it is to work with public and anonymous crowd workers, with varying levels of experience, to perform tasks in different domains and not only in software testing. In addition, it will assist individual or small development teams who have limited resources or who do not have thousands of testers in their private testing community, to perform large-scale testing of their products.
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The purpose of this paper is to test whether significant differences in ethical reasoning exist between Chinese accountants and managers when facing an ethical dilemma. Further…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to test whether significant differences in ethical reasoning exist between Chinese accountants and managers when facing an ethical dilemma. Further tests are conducted to identify what professional contextual factors and personal value preferences can be introduced to explain the ethical reasoning differences observed.
Design/methodology/approach
Three research questions are raised and related hypotheses are developed and tested by the use of a defined issue test (DIT) instrument containing four hypothetical scenarios of different dilemmatic issues, and a Rokeach values survey questionnaire adapted to suit the Chinese business culture.
Findings
The findings and conclusions include: Chinese managers and accountants are not significantly differentiated in terms of ethical reasoning levels measured by the overall DIT instrument, however, the break‐down results of the DIT individual dilemmatic scenarios shows that significant differences exist between the two professional types in three out of four scenarios. Second, gender and frequency of making compromises are two significant contextual determinant of ethical reasoning levels of managers but not those of accountants, and for the accountants, no significant contextual factors are observed in the current study. Third, in determining the impacts of value preferences on ethical reasoning levels, the four‐factor classification approach produces a more contrasting result than the seven‐factor classification approach.
Research limitations/implications
The selection of the four scenarios in the DIT instrument is subjective according to the designation of the test, and Chinese business profession's ethical ideologies might differ among different regions. However, these research limitations might inspire further ethics research on cross‐regional comparisons in China and other emerging economies.
Practical implications
In Chinese surging markets, appropriate socio‐economic order can only be maintained by highly ethical reasoning and conduct on the part of business managers and accountants. The current results and findings would help to identify what factors and value preferences weigh more, in order to improve the professional ethicality.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the research literature of business ethics by adding a managers‐accountants comparative study on ethical reasoning differences, especially the ethicality of two different professions in emerging economies; further, it includes contextual factors and value preferences in identifying those determinants of ethical reasoning differences.
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The purpose of this paper is to examine whether, when teaching professional ethics, the educational interventions have any effect on improving students' moral decisions. One…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine whether, when teaching professional ethics, the educational interventions have any effect on improving students' moral decisions. One method often used to measure change is the well‐established defining issues test – an American test based on Kohlberg's stage theory.
Design/methodology/approach
Using this test, two before‐and‐after studies were carried out on cross‐cultural cohorts of first year computing undergraduates which both received the same lectures, debates and moral‐decision‐making exercises.
Findings
One study showed a significant increase in moral judgment whilst the other showed a decrease (although not significant). Both studies indicated mean scores far below the American averages.
Research limitations/implications
As both studies involved relatively small sample sizes, the results are indicative rather than conclusive. However, they bring to light issues associated with the test, in both American and non‐American research, indicating that lower than average mean scores could be due to cross‐cultural and situational variations.
Practical implications
The paper questions the premise of stage theory as a method for measurement within a cross‐cultural context; and the usefulness of measuring one component of moral development (moral judgment) in isolation.
Originality/value
The paper proposes that tests based on more discipline‐specific skills, rather than stage theory, would be of greater use in evaluating student levels of moral development.
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This chapter reviews the evidence of the development of ethical decision-making competencies of medical professionals. Selected studies are reviewed that use a theoretical…
Abstract
This chapter reviews the evidence of the development of ethical decision-making competencies of medical professionals. Selected studies are reviewed that use a theoretical framework that has shown the most promise for providing evidence of character formation. The evidence suggests that entering professionals lack full capacity for functional processes that give rise to morality (sensitivity, reasoning, motivation and commitment, character and competence). Further, following professional education, considerable variations in these abilities persist. Whereas many perceive that role modeling is the most effective way to teach professionalism, there is no empirical evidence to support the role of modeling in professional development. The chapter concludes with suggestions for facilitating character development resistant to influence by negative role models or adverse moral milieu.
In this paper, we explore a new leadership theory termed “Issue Leadership,” where a leader is considered to be a person who looks for critical issues in the ordinary, involves…
Abstract
In this paper, we explore a new leadership theory termed “Issue Leadership,” where a leader is considered to be a person who looks for critical issues in the ordinary, involves the audience (i.e. those who are directly or indirectly related to a particular issue) in an effective way, and achieves outstanding performances and desired changes through efficient implementation of a proposed issue. Specifically, an issue leader is required to exhibit three distinctive behaviors: issue-creating, audience-involving, and issue-implementing. Antecedents and moderators of issue leadership behavior are identified, and their interrelationships are proposed in a comprehensive issue leadership model. After a detailed explanation of the issue leadership theory, we researched, and tried to answer the question, “How do we apply the theory to global business settings?”
Donald L. Ariail, Nicholas Emler and Mohammad J. Abdolmohammadi
Prior studies investigating the relationship between moral reasoning (as measured by the defining issues test, DIT) and political orientation have rendered mixed results. We seek…
Abstract
Prior studies investigating the relationship between moral reasoning (as measured by the defining issues test, DIT) and political orientation have rendered mixed results. We seek to find an explanation for these mixed results. Using responses from a sample of 284 practicing certified public accountants (CPAs), we find evidence that value preferences underlie both moral reasoning and political orientation. Specifically, we find a statistically significant inverse relationship between moral reasoning and conservatism in univariate tests. However, this relationship is no longer significant when eight individual value preferences and gender are taken into account. These results suggest that variations in moral reasoning scores of CPAs are accounted for by their value preferences, which also underlie their relative conservatism.
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William Joseph Wilhelm and Panom Gunawong
Moral reasoning research in Western cultures is grounded primarily in Kohlbergian cognitive moral theory. Enumerable investigations about the psychological determinants and…
Abstract
Purpose
Moral reasoning research in Western cultures is grounded primarily in Kohlbergian cognitive moral theory. Enumerable investigations about the psychological determinants and cultural dimensions of moral reasoning have provided significant insights about Western decision making and contributed to Western organizational behavioral theory. However, inquiry about these same constructs and how they may interact with moral reasoning in non-Western Southeast Asian trading partner countries has not provided comparable insights. The purpose of this paper is to remedy that by comparing predominant cultural dimensions to levels of moral reasoning in student and graduate populations in Thailand and the USA.
Design/methodology/approach
The Defining Issues Test (DIT) measurement of moral reasoning (Rest et al., 1999) and the Values Survey Module (VSM) 2013 (Hofstede and Minkov, 2013) were translated for the first time into Thai, pilot tested, and used to gather cultural and moral reasoning data in Thailand. The same English version instruments were used to gather comparable data among similarly matched US samples. Comparisons are presented in this paper, and differences in approaches to moral decision making are discussed.
Findings
Findings indicate that there are both significant psychological and cultural differences between the two nations that affect moral reasoning. Predominant status quo moral reasoning predominates in Thailand, while a polarity between self-interest moral reasoning and higher level abstract idealistic moral reasoning predominates in the USA. Potential cultural influences on these moral reasoning tendencies are discussed.
Research limitations/implications
While findings can be generalized to the sample populations of Thai and US undergraduate students and graduate students who are in the workplace, the considerable time required to complete the two survey instruments precluded inclusion of higher level, veteran managers and public policy administrators in the study. Alternative survey methods need to be developed for investigating these subjects in order to make the combined findings more robust and widely generalizable.
Practical implications
Careful attention to cultural and linguistic variables provided for thorough and effective first-time translations of the DIT and the VSM 2013 from English into the Thai language. These two instruments are now available to other researchers who wish to investigate cultural dimensions and moral reasoning through other research designs. The Thai-version DIT can be obtained from the copyright holder, Center for the Study of Ethical Development (http://ethicaldevelopment.ua.edu/). The Thai-version of the VSM can be obtained through the Geert Hofstede website (www.geerthofstede.nl/).
Social implications
These findings can help researchers in Western and non-Western countries to better understand the foundations upon which moral reasoning in the two countries is grounded, and can provide insights about how individuals in quite different cultures perceive ethical dilemmas in the workplace and public arena and attempt to solve them. The findings also serve as another entry point for business managers and public policy administrators to not only better understand organizational behavior as regards ethical decision making, but general decision making as well.
Originality/value
This is the first research study comparing cultural dimensions identified by Geert Hofstede and Michael Minkov as measured by the VSM 2013 to moral reasoning as measured by the DIT.
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